Hope Spot / Live-Action Films

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• 100 Feet: After another day of the protagonist being terrorized by the ghost of her abusive husband, another character comes over to "comfort" her. While they're having sex, she sees the ghost hovering above them, but it fades away harmlessly. She figures this is the last she's seen of the ghost, seeing as how by this point, she's gotten rid of seemingly all of his possessions. But when she and the other character awaken the next morning and she goes to look out the window at the beautiful day outside, the camera pans to the wedding ring she's still wearing, and the character she just slept with is suddenly knocked across the room and given a lengthy and fatal No-Holds-Barred Beatdown by the ghost as she's forced to watch.
• 1408: The Hope Spot given to both Mike and the viewer subverts a couple other tropes. Fairly late into the movie, we're inclined to believe that it was All Just a Dream. He starts to turn his life around, and starts confronting and repairing all of his life's problems that the room threw in his face. All in all a happy ending, right? Nope. Still in the room.
• Adrift (2018): About midway through after being Lost at Sea for several days, Tami sees a large freighter bearing down on them. Despite her attempts to get its attention, it sails on by with barely a ripple...then vanishes. It was never there.
• Alien Abduction (2014) offers us one as Jillian and Riley finally escape from the woods in the morning, having apparently eluded the aliens that kidnapped the rest of their family, and manage to flag down a highway patrolman. Unfortunately, as the cop is calling for an ambulance for the two, Riley's camera starts glitching, and the aliens show up one last time to grab the two (and possibly the cop as well).
• The Amazing Spider-Man 2: It actually looked like Gwen Stacy would be Spared by the Adaptation.
• Anino: The driver comes bounding out of his car yelling insults. He smacks the photographer and then pulls a gun. The photographer, showing lightning-fast reflexes, pulls the gun right out of the driver's hand, and then slaps him for good measure. It seems as if at least the photographer has reclaimed some dignity. But no, instead two people, possibly cops, jump out and beat the photographer up a little before chucking him in the back of a car.
• In Annie (2014), Annie is supposedly reunited with her real parents, only to find out they're dupes. By the time she figures this out, she's locked in their car.
• The Apparition: When Ben and Kelly reach Patrick's safe house. Except the power starts to flicker, almost as soon as they're inside it, enabling the Apparition to enter as well.
• Bang the Drum Slowly: Near the end, it looks like Bruce is recovering and will play the next season. Instead, he dies offscreen and the next scene is Henry walking away from Bruce's funeral.
• Battle Royale: This movie has Shinji Mimura's team succeed in hacking into the government's computers, temporarily deactivate the collars, and load up a truck with enough home-made explosives to blow up the school that serves as the government headquarters. They're about to start their attack when Kiriyama shows up and kills them all. However, Mimura is able to set off the explosives, blinding Kiriyama just as the other main characters show up.
• A particularly heart breaking soul crushing one happens towards the end of the 1983 Carnatic film Benkiya Bale. In it, the protagonist Narasimha Murthy has fallen ill with TB while near destitution in a poverty stricken village. He is finally admitted to a sanitarium but is prescribed an expensive antibiotic. His wife Rukmini works at a construction site performing menial labor in order to buy the antibiotic. She buys it and races back to the sanitarium. It looks like Narasimha Murthy will finally get his much needed medicine, be cured and resume life anew. But when she arrives, Rukmini finds some other man in her husbands hospital bed. She is then informed that Narasimha Murthy succumbed while she was away. This causes Rukmini to die from despair.
• Black Water: This movie is full of this. Every time they make some attempt at escape, it either turns out to be fruitless, or they have to get in the water and the croc attacks someone. Then in the third act, Lee leaves the injured Grace in the relative safety of the tree so she can have another go at getting the boat. She actually ends up taking a gun off a previous victim and shooting the crocodile dead. She then makes her way back to the tree, calling out to her sister that she "did it," and she's coming and they can go home... Then she gets back to the tree to discover Grace died from her wounds while Lee was away. Ouch.
• Black Wake: While Dr. Moreira is being chased, her pursuers are shot dead by a man with a gun who says he can help her. Then he's shot and killed by agents Johnson and Miller.
• Blankman has two:
  • The Manchild superhero, on a crusade to defeat the crime kingpin Michael "The Suit" Minelli, has created a robot sidekick and takes it along on his big mission. At one point it appears as if the clunky little droid has survived been blown up by a trap set by Minelli's thugs, but then it only manages to roll a few steps before splitting in two and falling apart. Blankman reacts with an anguished Big "NO!" that lasts for several seconds - and then immediately screams, "Minelli, you're goin' down!" (And he does.)
  • Earlier, he successfully subdues the thugs who kidnapped Mayor Harris and disarms the bomb that was about to go off. There's only enough time for a sigh of relief before they hear more beeping, and Blankman tears open a bag to find several more explosives primed to go. Without enough time to disarm them all or free the hostage, Mayor Harris calmly tells Blankman and Other Guy to flee to safety and accepts his impending death.
• Blood Bags: When the killer and his accomplices have all been killed, it seems like Tracy and Alex can now finally escape the mansion. Then the door and Alex disappear, and Tracy learns she dreamed it up when she finds herself strapped into a table.
• Brazil: At the end, Sam Lowry is restrained to a chair in a large, empty cylindrical room in the Ministry, to be tortured. However, before his torture begins, members of the resistance break into the Ministry. The resistance rescues Sam and blows up the Ministry building as they flee. Sam and Jill drive away from the city together, and they are pictured living in a trailer in the countryside. However, It is then revealed that Sam has gone completely insane and is catatonic in the torture chair, humming a happy tune. Cheerful!
• A Bridge Too Far: The British paratroopers watch helplessly as all of their supplies land in a drop zone that's been captured by the Germans. Then, a single canister lands just within reach of them. A paratrooper runs out to retrieve it. He's then shot by a German sniper, and when the canister opens, it's full of red berets instead of food, medicine, or ammo.
• Buried: When the protagonist gets the phone call that an insurgent revealed the location of a buried hostage, he calls his wife on the phone to give her the miraculous news, only to find out a few minutes later that his rescuers were informed of an entirely different hostage burial site. And all this is happening as the protagonist's coffin is quickly filling up with sand. The film ends when the coffin fills up completely, and the screen goes black.
• In The Burning, the raft crew heading back to the Camp Stonewater spot one of their missing canoes drifting in the river, and make their way to it. They find Cropsy hiding in it, and he kills them all.
• Played for Laughs at the end of Cabin Fever when the obnoxious Jerkass seems like he’s going to escape the movie as the Sole Survivor, even shouting “I fucking made it!” as he cries Tears of Joy... at which point he’s promptly shot dead by a quarantine team that thinks he’s infected. Also inverted with the creepy old man who shows off a shotgun and says “this is for the niggers”; when a pair of black men pull into his store at the end, the old man jumps up, grabs the gun, and politely hands it to them; turns out, “the niggas” are friends of his and he was maintaining the gun for them while they were out of town on business.
• Carlito's Way: Has a cruel one at the ending. It looks like Carlito has gotten away from his enemies and he'll finally escape to a peaceful life with his girlfriend, but right before he makes it into the departing train he is shot by Benny Blanco.
• Cloverfield: The protagonists are in a military helicopter, being evacuated. They look out the window and watch as the giant monster is bombed repeatedly. When the monster doesn't seem to be moving in the cloud of smoke, everybody cheers... and then, not only does it survive, it reveals it presence by leaping out of the dust and smoke, grabbing the helicopter, and dragging everybody down to the ground where they are all killed as Manhattan is bombed off the map.
• Collateral: About two-thirds of the way through, Detective Fanning pulls Max away from a nightclub firefight to safety. He believes his story, looks like he's going to help solve all of Max's woes...then is gunned down by Vincent without a pause.
• Count Yorga films love ending with these.
  • In the first film, Micheal has managed to survive through Yorga's traps and reaches where Yorga is keeping Donna. After managing to kill Yorga, the two are set to leave. But his surviving brides, one of whom was a friend whom Yorga turned, confronts them. Micheal manages to chase them back with a cross and into a room where he promptly locks the door dropping his cross in the process. Micheal takes a moment to catch his breath only for Donna to come at him with her newly gained fangs. The last sound he hears is her hissing inhumanly at him.
  • In The Return of Count Yorga. Baldwin manages to find Cynthia in Yorga's household. But the two are soon beset by Yorga's brides who block off their escape. They run into a room and Hayes catches his breath only for the lights to come on and he's confronted by the entirety of Yorga's undead harem in a dead end hallway, while Yorga himself calls Cynthia to him and goes to take her away to turn her. Just as he's about to, Baldwin suddenly calls out to Yorga and continues the chase, ending on the balcony of the manor. The two fight and Yorga looks like he's about to win when Cynthia finally regains her memories of Yorga's brides killing her family. She strikes him down with an ax and Baldwin pushes Yorga over the side which kills him. Cynthia hugs Baldwin to celebrate , only to sense something wrong. She pulls away and finds to her horror that he's been turned, apparently not having made it through the brides unscathed. Baldwin quickly wastes no time in biting her.
• The Crazies (2010): After David and Russel defy orders and shut off the water flow that is infecting people, it seems like there's a chance things will get under contorl. Then the military shows up to put everyone in a quarantine camp and most of the people left running wild are Crazies worse than the ones seen before.
• The Dark Knight:
  • The shotgun-toting mob bank manager looks like he might be able to drive off the robbers, but fails. Then again, can't have The Joker get killed so early, right?
  • And then Joker and his gang got imprisoned, Gordon is actually alive, and Harvey and Rachel are set to ride off into the sunset... Or so you think.
  • Harvey has an In-Universe one shortly afterwards... As he's lying in a hospital bed recovering from a bomb blast, he's convinced that Rachel is dead. Then he finds the "lucky" coin (you make your own luck, it has two heads) he gave to her the last time he saw her alive, left on his bedside and apparently unmarred. He turns it over... and sees it's charred on the back.
• Gets a Lampshade Hanging and Invoked Trope by Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, who believes that true despair requires giving others a glint of hope. In his case, this was the light coming from the roof in the Hellhole Prison he lived in. In Gotham's case, it's giving the people the impression that the city can be freed from the corruption of the elite by using a nuke as a threat, all the while intending to have the bomb blow everyone up no matter what.
• An extremely cruel one in Das Boot, as the submarine tries to sneak through the Straits of Gibraltar and is damaged by Allied aircraft, sinking to the bottom. The crew manage to raise her and repair her before their oxygen runs out, and the captain tells them to run for La Rochelle. Sweeping, intense music plays as the submarine makes it's escape, with the captain yelling to the distant British "not yet, kameraden, not yet!". Then, after they arrive at La Rochelle, safe after their long and perilous voyage, an Allied aircraft strafes the dock and kills most of the crew and main cast.
• Deepwater Horizon: There are a couple; when they manage to get the generators going again, which gives the bridge at least some control over the situation, but they lose power again almost immediately. Then when they try to cut the pipe, the blades are unable to penetrate it, then get sheared off by the intense pressure, leaving them with no means to keep the rig's drift from tearing the well open.
• Deewaar: Anita reveals that she is pregnant, so Vijay decides to stop being a criminal and start a new life with her. And then Samant's gang show up at Anita's place…
• The Departed: Two instances:
  • First, a downplayed version of this trope. Frank Costello is dead, as are most of his underlings, following the gunfight between the police and his crew. Costigan finally is able to come into the police office and it looks like he’ll be able to have a legitimate livelihood. This a downplayed trope, as while it seems like Costigan will survive and have a future, Sullivan will get away with it. But then, Costigan sees Costello’s envelope, and realizes Sullivan was the mole, and runs out of the office. Sullivan then deletes Costigan’s police file so no one will know he’s a policeman.
  • Second, the movie has a very straightforward version of this trope. Costigan apprehends Sullivan and it appears he’ll survive and justice will be survived. Then, as he gets out of an elevator with Sullivan, without warning, another mole suddenly shoots Costigan in the head.
• The Descent:
  • Where in the end, one of the ladies makes it alive out of the cave, getting out through a narrow gap, runs to her car, drives away. Then it turns out she was hallucinating, and is still sitting in the cave, crazy and catatonic. As the camera pulls away, we hear the crawlers screeching.
  • This ending is the original British version. The American release cuts The Reveal that Sarah was hallucinating her escape, making seem like she got out of the cave alive. The sequel pretends that the American release was real.
• Die Hard 2:
  • Stuart prepares to trick an airplane into crashing to send a message to the authorities. McCalne races onto the runway and waves flaming sticks, making it appear that he'll be spotted by the pilots who realize how close they are to the ground and pull up. They don't and the plane crashes.
  • Grant and his special forces team prepare to track down Stuart and it looks like they'll save the day... then it turns out they're actually working with the terrorists all along.
  • One for the villains at the end as they appear ready to take off and make their escape, the commandos sitting in their seats, lighting up cigars, joking on how they'll spend the money... unaware the plane is leaking fuel. On the ground, McCalne ignites the fuel trail which catches up to the plane just as it's taking off and blows the terrorists out of the sky in a huge fireball.
• Don't Look Up is about a Comet of Doom that will hit and destroy earth in six months, and the desperate attempts of Professor Randall Mindy, an astronomy professor, and his student, Kate Dibiasky, to convince the powers that be to take the threat seriously. Eventually, there is a plan put together by NASA to have ships fly towards the comet and use nuclear missiles to blow it up. Everything goes well at the launch of the ships, and NASA officials are confident everything is within the margin of error, only for the ships to turn back because the President has decided to go with a different option by a donor who wants to mine the comet for its wealth and then destroy it.
• Drag Me to Hell: Christina digs up the Gypsy lady's corpse and passes the curse back to her by shoving an envelope containing the cursed button into her mouth. It's over, right? Well, it turns out that the envelope that Christina buried the Gypsy woman with didn't contain the button at all, but rather, her boyfriend's rare coin. She still technically owned the button, which meant that, since three days have passed, she has to go to Hell. Got to love Sam Raimi's sense of humor.
• Dragonslayer: Subverted. When Galen throws Ulrich's ashes into the lake of fire, for a moment the music swells and Galen looks around the lake, expecting the revived Ulrich to appear. Then the flames die away and the entire cavern goes dark. Then a column of green fire appears on the water's surface, and Ulrich walks out of the flames.
• Earthquake: Stewart swimming over to Remy and helping her toward the water feels like a big redemptive moment that will save their marriage, but then the flood intensifies and washes both of them away before they can reach the ladder.
• Eden Lake:
  • Leaving a mortally wounded Steve in hiding, Jenny searches for power lines of which Steve reminded her and by which she believes she can find her way into town. She finds them and follows them until she impales her foot on an upturned spike, which wounds her and immobilizes her long enough for one of the town teens to find her.
  • Zig-zagged in the final segment. After stealing a van, Jenny drives to leave Eden Lake until the car's struck on the side by an oncoming vehicle, and she crashes into the yard of a house, with locals having a party. They assist her after she asks and agree to help her before she realizes that the home is owned by Brett's parents and that several of the others' parents, including Cooper's, are in attendance. Upon realizing that she murdered two teens, their opinion on her takes a 180, and Brett's father kills her in the shower.
• The Edge: Charles and the others initially think they can make it to a peak in time to launch a flare which search party will see, leading to a fast rescue. The flares fall in the river when the bear forces them to cross a narrow log bridge and then shakes it. Additionally, it later turns out they were going in the wrong direction to find a search party.
• In Elysium a lone ship manages to make it past and evade Kruger's missiles but are apprehended upon landing. One of the immigrants from the shuttle that manages to make it to Elysium manages to get to a Med Pod and heal her daughter's leg enabling her to walk. Only to get tazed and arrested immediately afterwards. All things considered, though, that woman got exactly what she came for. It's highly unlikely she expected to stay there.
• Everest (2015): Base Camp arranges to send fresh oxygen up to Rob, who is stranded near the summit. Unfortunately his rescuers are forced to turn back before they can reach him when the weather takes a bad turn.
• The Evil: The force that keeps characters trapped lets one them escape the Vargas house, only to turn the ground beneath him into quicksand couple feet away.
• Ex Machina: Just when you think Ava's dressing herself in skin and a nice dress and is now going to go surprise Caleb with it and run away with him - she doesn't. Instead she leaves him trapped in Nathan's compound - presumably till he eventually dies.
• Final Destination: The entire plot of this series revolves around the main characters narrowly avoiding death and being killed off as fate "catches up with them". Five films of splat as plot....
• Fish Story: In one sequence, the Champion of Justice has been beaten down and tied up, but manages to free himself. He rises, and begins the Slow Walk towards where the villains are standing. A couple of spectators look on in awe as the music swells...and then stops, and the flinch as a series of gunshots end the sequence. On the other hand, in the end we see the full scene, as the Champion dodges bullets, lays down the law, and saves everyone.
• Fist of Legend: Jet Li's best movie, has a pretty cool one. At one point, the Big Bad has a cut above his eye, and Li waits till a drop of blood is about to drip into his eye, then attacks... but... ouch.
• The Flintstones: The Live-Action Adaptation has one when the mob is about to hang Fred for firing them from their jobs as Barney comes in when he admits that he's the reason Fred was promoted to the executive job. The mob then decides to hang both of them.
• Funhouse (2020): Headstone manages to narrowly beat Botas in a Duel to the Death despite the latter's massive size advantage. Nero congratulates him, only to reveal that he will now have to fight the other 3 Wrestling Monsters simultaneously while already being exhausted from the first fight.
• Funny Games is filled with situations where you feel hopeful for the victims, like something would turn in their favor, and each time that door was slammed shut.
  • The son gets hold of a shotgun and shoots at one of the villains. Too bad the rifle wasn't loaded.
  • The killers suddenly leave, giving the husband and wife some glimmer of hope that they'll survive. Paul later lampshades that this was necessary for traditional plot structure.
  • The cellphone comes back to life, giving the survivors hope of rescue. But no, the Distress Call amounts to nothing.
  • The wife manages to grab the killers' gun and shoot one of them. It looks like the other killer loses his mind when he tries to undo the event with a remote control, but it actually works. The scene rewinds and this time the killers hang onto the gun.
  • When the wife is tied up in the boat and they are about to push her into the lake, she spots the knife her son had left there earlier and for a few moments it looks like she might actually be able to get away. However, one of the killers notices it too and grabs it before she has a chance to take it.
• Get Ready to Be Boyzvoiced: After the band's plans to release their first album completely disintegrate, they consider leaving the music business altogether, but their manager Timothy manages to find them a sponsorship deal — with Frionor Seafoods, a Norwegian fish finger manufacturer.
• In the climax of Glory, even after Colonel Shaw is killed, the regiment rallies and achieves a breakthrough into Fort Wagner. Then they find Confederate cannons inside the fort aimed at them.
• Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack!:
  • Used in this film. At first, it looks like King Ghidorah (Who is ironically the good guy in the movie while Godzilla is the Big Bad) has the upper hand against Godzilla. However, it turns out that Godzilla has simply been absorbing all of his attacks and then fires a super-charged Thermonuclear Breath attack at Ghidorah causing him to explode.
  • A more minor example: A girl who survived an earlier rampage lies trapped in a hospital bed (due to having a leg in traction) and can only scream/sob in horror as Godzilla heads straight for the hospital...and passes harmlessly right by it. The poor girl quickly composes herself and breathes a sigh of relief. Unfortunately for her, his tail has other ideas.
• Godzilla (2014)
  • During the monsters' arrival at San Francisco, a MUTO unleashes an EMP. Elle sees a trooper parachuting in and thinks help is on the way... until it turns out that the "trooper" was a pilot who had ejected from his fighter, as planes start dropping out of the sky.
  • Another one occurs when Lt. Brody manages to start to get the boat with the nuke on it going into the sea, only to then have it die when the female MUTO shows up.
• GoldenEye: Boris Grishenko has somehow survived a massive gunfight, complete with explosions, that has killed everyone around him. He takes a moment to celebrate his good fortune with his Catchphrase ("I am INVINCIBLE!")... and a vat of liquid nitrogen bursts right behind him, covering him and freezing him to death instantly.
• Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum: While Charlotte is running through the woods to try and get away from Ji-Hyun (who's possessed by a ghost and muttering something very fast), she sees the tent Ha-Joon is using as the main base. Thinking she's found safety, she runs through it into darkness. She then sees she's in an unfamiliar room in Gonjiam Psychiatric Hospital (the inside of room 402), with some contorted naked person.
• Inverted in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. When Tuco is forced to stand on a cross with a rope around his neck, he watches helplessly as Blondie rides away into the hills. Then he sees Blondie coming back, and loading his rifle. His smile fades when he thinks Blondie is going to shoot him. Instead, Blondie shoots the rope, sparing Tuco's life.
• In Goodnight Mommy, the mother manages to work the tape gag off of her mouth... right after the Red Cross workers left. Then, later, when untied, she manages to run downstairs and heads for an open doorway... only to hit a tripwire and knock herself out.
• At the end of the Holocaust movie The Grey Zone, after the Jewish Sonderkommandos have all been killed, it almost seems like Mussfeld is going to let the little girl live and run away to freedom. As she runs towards the gates, he nonchalantly grabs his pistol and shoots her in back of the head.
• Groundhog Day:
  • Parodied, when Phil — driven to despair by the "Groundhog Day" Loop he's trapped in — kidnaps the titular groundhog and drives with it over the edge of a quarry in front of his cameraman and producer:
  [The truck smashes into the bottom of the quarry and lies still]
  Larry: [Weakly] He... might be okay.
  [The truck explodes]
  Larry: Well... no. Probably not now.
  • A curious Inverted Trope is also presented at the end; after a day in which Phil has proved himself to be a new man and has finally won over Rita, the scene cuts to the same shot of Phil, lying in bed at 6:00AM with Sonny and Cher's "I Got You Babe" playing, suggesting that he still hasn't managed to break the loop. Then, after the song, the DJs begin a different conversation, and Rita leans over him and turns the radio off...
    • "I got you babe" does start at a different part in the song on Feb 3. it's done much more straight in the "Christmas Every Day" version, in which the kid wakes up on Dec 26, to the EXACT same rendition of "Jingle Bells", at the EXACT same point in the song, and hears his little sister exclaim "Santa came! Santa Came!" which turns out to be the rest of the family watching a tape of the day before.
• In Hangmen Also Die!, Czaka is successfully framed for Reinhard Heydrich's assassination, Dr. Svoboda is thus off the hook, and Ritter tells Mascha that the remaining hostages will be released in the morning. And then we see Professor Novotny be executed—the last in a long line of hostages.
• Happy Gilmore has a more humorous example when Chubbs is training Happy to hone his inadequate putting ability in Happy Land. At one point, he is forced to putt a ball into the mouth of a disembodied animatronic clown head, which laughs whenever he comes up short. Finally, Happy gets the ball in its mouth, only for it to make an inhalation sound and spit the ball out, laughing once more. Happy finally snaps and smashes its nose off, creating sparks and causing the machine to malfunction with Chubbs dragging him out as he continues shouting at it.
• Hazmat has two.
  • When Gary finally reaches the back door, he tells the others over the camera that he'll be back, only to be dragged off-screen. Then his severed head is thrown back into the camera's view.
  • At the end, when Brenda has finally unlocked the door, she's about to exit when she's pulled off-screen by Jacob, who chops her with his axe.
• Hellraiser: Inferno: After Pinhead informs Joseph about how his flesh destroyed his spirit and Joseph's evil side kills him, Joseph wakes up in the motel again with the hooker still alive. For a short while it seems like all is well and Pinhead just taught Joseph a lesson to better himself, but the hooker is again murdered and Joseph's fate dawns on him.
• The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug: it seems the greedy Smaug is finally willing to give Bilbo the Arkenstone, so he can finally see Thorin's greed drive him to madness. Unfortunately, the worm got tired of playing riddles and immediately plans to kill Bilbo Baggins.
  Smaug: I am almost tempted to let you take it, if only to see Oakenshield suffer, watch it destroy him, watch it corrupt his heart and drive him mad... [Short beat] but I think not. I think our little game ends here! So tell me, thief... how do you choose to DIE?
  • Later on, The Company manage to lead Smaug into a trap by using newly melted gold to cover him in it in the hopes of smothering him. For a moment it seems to work only for Smaug to climb out of it, utterly unscathed, angry and setting to take revenge on the nearby human village for the slight.
• The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies: Bilbo is absently playing with the Arkenstone when Thorin walks up and demands to see what he's holding. Bilbo manages to hide the Arkenstone in time and presents an acorn to Thorin instead, revealing that he'd picked the acorn up on their adventure and was planning to bring it home and plant it in his garden, as a memento of the journey. Thorin is genuinely touched by this, enough to see the gold sickness fade for a moment, and Bilbo comes close to getting through to him...But the rest of the company unfortunately picks a bad time to come up and inform Thorin that the survivors of Laketown are camping out front.
• Horrorvision: Late in the movie, Dez wakes up with a jump and a shout in his bed next to Dazzy, implying that everything with Horrorvision didn't happen... then he wakes up again in Bradbury's car.
• The Hunger Games: Invoked by Haymitch, convincing Seneca to change the Game's rules. "Give them something to root for: young love." This backfires horribly for Seneca.
• In Good Company:
  • Initially, it seems as if the threatened mass layoffs will be avoided, and Carter will be able to get away with just firing the Pointy-Haired Boss serving under him. However, several scenes later, Carter's boss demands that he start "letting people go" left and right.
  • Related to those layoffs, it looks as if a cross-promotional deal might be able to prevent them, and the executive and Dan meet with seems receptive. Then he explains that his new parent company is feuding with Teddy K and won't let them do business.
• Independence Day: After learning that the aliens plan to exterminate the humans and strip Earth of all its resources, President Whitmore gives the order "Nuke 'em. Let's nuke the bastards." The first City Destroyer they are able to hit is over Houston. After the nuke detonates, everyone is cheered to see that the ship has apparently been destroyed as well, until the smoke clears and they see that the ship is still in one piece.
• In the Fade: Just when Katja has chosen to die in sorrow over her husband and son dying without their murderers ever found, she gets a call about the police arresting them. However, they're acquitted in their trial, dashing her hope. She decides to kill both of them, and herself.
• In Jaws, this was the implicit reason why Quint, in his legendary Indianapolis monologue, mentions being the most frightened when he and his fellow sailors started being rescued after spending 5 days out at sea, enduring shark attacks, exposure, and no food or drinkable water. Sometimes the worst thing you can do to a man is give him hope.
• Jurassic Park: During the climax, power has just been restored, the door that one of the velociraptors has been trying to get through—overpowering two grown adults to do so—has been locked, and triumphant music plays as Grant calls Hammond, who is tending to an injured Malcolm in the security bunker. Hammond and Malcolm are genuinely surprised to hear the phone ringing and Hammond learns from Grant's own words that his grandchidlren are there with him, safe. All is well, they're going to be fine and get out of there alive. Then the sound of glass shattering, Sattler yells a warning, and we cut to Hammond as he hears gunshots over the phone, then silence. All that relief he'd felt hearing that Tim and Lex were safe was instantly replaced by utter horror, and while we the audience immediately see that they aren't dead yet, they're far from safe again.
• A very cruel one in Kanał, set during the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. Daisy is escorting/dragging the wounded Korab through the maze of the Warsaw sewer system. Finally they get to a drain, with Daisy sobbing with relief as she pulls Korab around a corner—only to find that the drain's exit is barred.
• Killer Under the Bed: After Kilee buries the doll, she runs into Mr. McCabe at school later. She asks him what he remembers, and he plainly states that he went home and graded test papers. Seeing this as a sign that what she did worked, Kilee goes to leave, only for Mr. McCabe to grab her shoulder, indicating that what she did DIDN'T work.
• Kung Pow! Enter the Fist does this hilariously. After being captured by a tiny net and freeing himself, The Chosen One runs back to find Master Tang, Ling, Wimp Lo and the dog dying or dead. Then, he finds out that Ling is alive, followed by the dog. He goes to check on Wimp Lo, who... isn't. And completely forgets about Master Tang, who is last seen having his body eaten by vultures in the post-credits scene while still alive.
• Played for Laughs in Let It Ride: Jay Trotter, who's been having a hot streak, is on his way to bet on the next race when he gets arrested by the police, who think he's a pickpocket. They have Trotter handcuffed at the station when he breaks out and starts running towards the ticket window so he can place his bet. It looks like Trotter has a clear path to the window and will be allowed to place his bet...and that's when Looney, his friend, who's pissed at Trotter because he thinks Trotter screwed him over by winning a race earlier, executes a perfect dive in front of Trotter so that he trips and falls. By the time Trotter recovers and pulls himself up, the race has started and the betting window has closed. Of course, then it's subverted by the fact the horse Trotter wanted to bet gets into an accident in the middle of the race and loses, so Trotter didn't lose as a result.
• Played for Laughs in Liar Liar when Fletcher, who is under the effects of a magical birthday wish that prohibits him from lying and outright forces him to answer with the complete truth when asked a question, becomes so desperate to delay a court case until after it wears off that he beats the complete manshit out of himself in the bathroom. He even manages to get away with lying by telling the truth, by outright describing himself as the perpetrator when asked who did it, and is absolutely ecstatic when Judge Stevens recesses the case until 9 AM tomorrow — but of course the judge also asks him if he feels he can still proceed...
• Little Sweetheart: The final shot is of Elizabeth, who, defying all logic, seeing as she's a 9-year-old who took two bullets (one in the arm and one in the chest) and was face down in the water for several minutes at least. The OCEAN water.
• Live Free or Die Hard: Has a double one right near the ending. John McClane bursts in on Big Bad Thomas Gabriel to kill him and then rescue his hostage daughter and his ally Matt Farrell. Suddenly one of the Gabirel's goons comes from behind and is able to shoot him, winging his shoulder. Then as the injured McClane crawls for cover, said goon that shot him takes Lucy at gunpoint, but she's able to break free from his grip and kick his gun over to her father... but then Gabriel is able to stop it. Although things do turn out good in the end, it does initially throw one for a loop on the first viewing.
• The Lord of the Rings:
  • A couple in this series:
  • The first film opens with one, as the Last Alliance has routed the orcs defending Mount Doom and are moving in for the kill...then Sauron himself comes out, dressed in full body armor and wielding a mace large enough to send elves flying by the dozen with each swing.
  • In The Two Towers, when the Helm's Deep siege is, while bloody for both sides, still going in favor of the defenders despite the odds against them. Théoden even asks, "Is this all you can conjure, Saruman?" Of course, a short time later, a gunpowder explosive blows a massive hole in the wall, and things begin to proceed as well as you'd expect.
  • Then there are a few in The Return of the King. After the counter-charge by the horsemen under King Théoden successfully routs the much-larger orc army, and the king gives a shout of victory, we can hear the distant rumble of thunder, followed closely by a bizarre bellowing sound. The thunder continues, almost as if it's footsteps...cue entrance of two dozen Mûmakil, aka several story tall war elephants, or, more simply, Sauron's answer to heavy cavalry.
    • Shortly afterward, Théoden organizes a charge against the Mûmakil, the triumphant orchestra music reaches its crescendo as the two lines meet...and then suddenly ends as the first cluster of riders are smashed into the air by the lead Mûmak's tusks. Several more are stomped to death or simply swept aside. It's as though the orchestra fled the battlefield when they realized what an immensely bad idea charging the Mûmakil was.
  • Later in that battle, the tide is turning as the Mûmakil begin to fall. Then...the Witch-King shows up.
• Mad Max: Fury Road:
  • The Splendid Angharad seems to be crushed when the War Rig sideswipes a boulder, but look! She's a-okay! Max even gives her a thumbs-up! She then proceeds to slip thanks to her injured leg, falling off the War Rig and getting crushed to death by the Gigahorse.
  • The War Rig has escaped Immortan Joe's army, Nux has pulled a Heel–Face Turn, Max personally killed the Bullet Farmer and got plenty of ammo out of it, and our heroes finally meet Furiosa's old tribe... But then she finds out that the Green Place of her memories has turned into a rancid swamp and that the Vuvalini have been reduced to but a handful.
• In The Mansion, after the characters have learned that they're trapped at the eponymous mansion, their van having disappeared, and are being stalked by a killer, a truck is spotted at the edge of the property. It turns out to be their friend, Enzo. Unfortunately, during his grand dance entrance, he reveals the presence of bear traps on the lawn by getting caught in one.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Captain America: Civil War
    • Midway through the film, it seems as though Steve is about to make compromises and sign the Accords. At that point, Tony mentions in passing that Wanda is being kept in house arrest at the compound, as a result of her causing collateral damage in the battle at the start of the film. This results in a heated argument between Steve and Tony, ending with Steve storming out.
    • After a grueling airport battle that ended with Rhodey being disabled, Tony gets evidence that the Big Bad set everything up and rushes off to help Steve and it seems that they might reconcile. Then it turns out the villain has lured them into a trap made to make Tony and Steve turn on one another for good.
  • Thor: Ragnarok has two examples of this, both of them Played for Laughs:
    • During the Gladiator Match, Thor manages to daze Hulk with a haymaker, before trying to revert him back to Banner with the same "Sun's getting real low..." lullaby Natasha used in Age of Ultron. Hulk appears to be calming down, reaches to grab Thor's hand, and everything seems fine... only for Hulk to pound him in the exact same manner he pounded Loki in The Avengers.
    • A more darkly comedic variant occurs near the end: As Surtur lays waste to all of Asgard and thereby fulfills Ragnarok, which Thor and the others initiated in order to stop Hela, Korg mentions that as long as the foundations remain strong, Asgard can be rebuilt and become a haven for people all over the galaxy. But then, Surtur and Asgard both explode into a cloud of dust, to which Korg responds with what is essentially "Nevermind..."
  • Avengers: Infinity War has three brutal examples.
    • A group of the heroes including Iron Man, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange and Star-Lord, Drax and Mantis have successfully subdued Thanos and are in the process of tearing the gauntlet containing four Infinity Stones off of his hand. Then Star-Lord tragically loses his temper when he finds out that Thanos killed Gamora, and repeatedly punches him, ruining their plan and setting Thanos free.
    • Wanda and Vision spend the whole movie trying to find a way to destroy the Mind Stone without killing Vision in the process. Eventually, after an ambush on Shuri's lab and Thanos's arrival in Wakanda, Vision convinces Wanda that there is no time to save him, and that she should destroy the stone. She does, and Vision dies, but she takes satisfaction in the fact that she kept Thanos from completing the Infinity Gauntlet. However, Thanos brings Vision back using the Time Stone and rips the Mind Stone out of his head, killing him again and completing the Gauntlet.
    • Finally, Thor, who has spent the entirety of the film searching for a weapon that could kill Thanos, returns with said weapon and sends it flying through a blast of power from all six Infinity Stones and straight into Thanos' chest, mortally wounding him. As Thor walks up to Thanos and drives his new axe deeper into Thanos' chest, Thanos begins to gasp out "Y-you..." as if trying to string together his last words... only to immediately regain his composure and say "You should have gone for the head." With his remaining strength he snaps his fingers, using the power of the stones to rewrite reality, heal himself and kill half of the universe's population anyway.
  • Spider-Man: No Way Home sees Aunt May brutally struck by the Green Goblin's glider at high speed, then both she and Peter Parker gets caught in the explosion of a pumpkin bomb. Miraculously, both of them survive, with May, obviously shaken, but still alive, able to speak (even assuring to Peter that she's okay) and get up. It seems like the two are about to walk away for another day... then May promptly collapses again from the severity of the trauma, and she dies in Peter's arms.
• The Matrix Trilogy seems particularly fond of this trope:
  • The subway fight between Neo and Agent Smith in the first film has no less than three Hope Spots. The first is when Neo opens the fight with a surprisingly solid start by smashing Smith's sunglasses and visibly pissing the latter off — before getting Punched Across the Room and coughing blood all over the floor. But he gets up, does an Ass Kicking Pose, and starts to completely turn the tables on Smith — before ending up on the receiving end of Smith's Spam Attack. Finally, he barely escapes Smith's chokehold and leaves him up to get run over by the train ("My name... is NEO!") — and Smith simply possesses a new body that's on the train and strolls out to face Neo again. Neo understandably decides to just haul ass out of there.
  • The Matrix Reloaded:
    • During the first Smith fight, Neo basically starts off easily smacking around the initial half-dozen Smiths but starts to get overwhelmed when they call in reinforcements. So he looks around and opts to rip a large metal pole out of the ground, and after doing his Ass Kicking Pose with triumphant music blaring in the background, he resumes violently thrashing around the crowd of now several dozen Smiths. But then they call in more Smiths for help, and the pole ends up being the one thing holding the massive swarm at bay. Then of course he loses it and they promptly pile on top of him.
    • In a similar vein as the subway fight, a pair of Hope Spots happen at the climax of the freeway chase. During Morpheus's fight against the Agent on the semi-truck, Morpheus is losing the battle when he sees his katana jammed into the side of the truck. He starts successfully driving the Agent back — until said Agent disarms him and punches him off the truck. Niobe luckily catches him on the hood of her car, and he leaps back into the fray, knocking the Agent off just in time to save the Keymaker — until said Agent simply possesses the truck driver and prepares to crash it in a fiery explosion. Luckily, this happens to be the time Neo finally catches up with them.
• In the Netflix horror film Malevolent, Angela, the psychic main character, limps down the road at the end, and comes upon her brother Jackson, who was last seen being dragged off by the villain. Yay! He escaped! Then he turns around, revealing all his wounds are gone, and blithely asks if she's seen his girlfriend (who was murdered earlier)—the villain killed him off-screen and he's come back as a ghost.
• Memphis Belle: The opening scene has the crew and their commanding officer watching planes come back from the last bombing run. As more and more arrive, they desperately begin to hope that every airman in the squadron will make it back alive. All of the planes make it back to the landing strip, but one of them is damaged and crashes and explodes seconds after landing.
• Misery: Famous one occurs near the end: After spending near the entire movie attempting to track down Paul Sheldon after his disappearance, the sheriff finally discovers him at Annie Wilkes' home. So, Big Damn Heroes moment and Paul will finally be saved by the guy, right? Well, it would have been... if Annie didn't then immediately kill the sheriff, dashing Paul's first sign of rescue in months...
  • Another example happens between Annie and Paul. After Paul found a way to sneak out of the guest room and learned what a truly evil woman Annie Wilkes was, he comes up with a plan to free himself by stealing a knife from the kitchen and hiding it under his bed. Assuming that Annie was unaware of his ability to sneak out, Paul would surprise her in the morning and free himself of her cruelty. Later that night, Paul wakes up terrified to see Annie standing above him and making it clear that she knows. And what was suppose to be the morning Paul freed himself, turns out to be one of the most terrifying of his life as he watches helplessly while Annie uses a sledgehammer to break both his feet so he can't sneak out of the room anymore.
  • Another instance is when he manages to sneak some painkillers into her wine during their dinner. She drinks, but then drops it by accident.
• The Mummy Returns: the Mejai defeat the dreaded Army of Anubis, but, as the soldiers celebrate, their leader Ardeth-Bey realises that something is wrong - it was way too easy, and the anubites didn't nearly live up to their reputation as an apocalyptic threat. He's correct - they've only faced an advance troop, and the main force is rushing on them, covering the entire desert as far as the eye could see, like an endless black tide.
• Mystery Team: The team thinks they have the case all wrapped up... then they find Leroy and Destiny dead at the lumberyard, and suddenly none of their theories make sense.
• The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The main villain falls from a tall building, but miraculously bounces off an awning and lands completely unharmed. He smiles, straightens his clothes, and as he starts to walk away is mauled to death by a lion that escaped from the zoo earlier in the film.
• Necronomicon (1993): A female cop looking for her kidnapped colleague is lured into an ancient cavern by two bat-people disguised as humans, as their brethren need her brains to procreate. After praying to God for help and promising to turn her life around, she wakes up from a coma in the hospital with her parents (who resemble the two people from the cave) besides her, who tell her that she's pregnant. But no, she's still in the cave and she's carrying one of the bat-things inside her.
• The Night They Knocked: When the protagonists realize they're under attack, one of them remembers that they keep a shotgun in the house. However, Dom reveals that his and Derrick's parents knew Derrick would be at the house that weekend. Not wanting someone with a criminal record getting his hands on a weapon, they had the gun removed.
• A Nightmare on Elm Street:
  • Freddy Krueger loves giving his enemies hope spots in the movies: his usual method is to let the heroes think they're actually hurting him, and then shrugs off his injuries with a laugh as soon as they let their guard down. Among others there's Will, whose dream-powers as a wizard seem to be working against Freddy until he gets within striking range; Kincaid, whose superstrength sends Freddy flying until he simply adjusts his own strength to match; Kristen, who seems to take control of her dreams via lucid dreaming and change it into a pleasant summer beach before Freddy turns it back into a nightmare; and Alice, who suffers two of them in two different movies as her attempts to fight Freddy seem to be intimidating him, until he smiles, waves his hand and undoes all the damage.
  • He even does it to fellow horror villain Jason Voorhees in their dream-world fight in Freddy vs. Jason. When Jason manages to hack off Freddy's arm with a machete, Freddy gives an exaggerated "oh no, not my arm!" And then, after a beat, he simply conjures up a new arm.
  • The Reveal in the original Friday the 13th (1980) is preceded by one. An old friend of the Christys (the family of the guy opening the camp) arrives at the scene to find a terrified Final Girl and all seems to go well. Unfortunately, that family friend is Pamela Voorhees, Jason's mother and the real killer of the film.
• Night Of Dark Shadows: Quentin has finally managed to shake off his past life as Charles Collins for good, chosen his wife and his friends over Angelique, and Carlotta Drake dies, apparently ending the cycle of reincarnation and death that curses both her and Quentin. Then it's revealed that Quentin is also keeping the curse alive, and when he stops back by the house for the last time just to pick up his supplies, he falls to James one last time, adopting his scar and his limp, his wife presumably dying moments after the end of the film, while his friends die off camera.
• Night of the Living Dead (1968): There's an absolutely brutal one at the end. Ben is the only character who has lived through to the end of the night, by being calmer, smarter and all-around more badass than the other survivors. It's morning, and the police and military are systematically killing the zombies. They reach the house where he's staying, Ben looks out of the window, and they shoot him in the head and move on without even a word of dialogue.
• Night of the Living Dead (1990): The Jerkass Mr. Cooper gets one in the remake when Barbara and the redneck hunting party return to the farmhouse in the morning. After shooting the undead Ben, the rednecks go to search the farmhouse. Alone, Barbara receives a Jump Scare: Cooper is alive and has come down from the attic, where he was hiding. "You came back," he says. Whereupon Barbara shoots him between the eyes.
• No One Gets Out Alive: When Red and Becker have Ambar and the other female tenants of the apartment chained up and defenseless, Ambar starts begging the more reluctant-to-go-along-with-it Red to let her go. He reaches down and unlocks the padlock on Ambar's chains, but then apologizes to her before Becker carries her off.
• Operation Crossbow: Lots of them in a row. Bradley's mission to warn Henshaw that his cover identity belongs to a wanted murderer fails by a matter of seconds and Henshaw is arrested. Then the Nazis offer not to execute Henshaw if he'll spy on the other scientists, only for a returning Nazi spy to recognize and denounce Henshaw. Meanwhile Nora, the ex-wife of the man Curtis is impersonating, shows up wanting him to sign a document giving her custody of their kids. They nearly fool her into thinking that her ex-husband is away and Curtis is a different person, but then someone comes in and addresses Curtis by his alias. Curtis then tries to convince the resistance fighters that Nora isn't a Nazi sympathizer and he can ensure her silence by signing the custody document, which will be voided if it turns out it wasn't her real husband who signed it. His resistance contact acts reassured, but then kills Nora as soon as Curtis leaves.
• PCU: It looks like the party has raised enough money, but it was a trap, where the student body would file complaints over the party.
• The Perfect Storm: Where right near the end, the main characters see the calm with sunlight shining towards them. They pass through the eye and then... cue more strong waves that capsize the boat.
• Pitch Black: The crash survivors are stranded on a desert world with three suns. Searching for water, they eventually find some trees on a hill on the horizon. Yay, right? Sadly, the 'trees' are the skeletal fins of a giant space beastie... and beyond the hill, there's a canyon full of such skeletons. Imam gasps "What could have killed so many great beasts?"
• Planet of the Apes (1968): What was the jungle in the end of the original movie? It turns out to be ruins of the Statue of Liberty and it WAS Earth All Along.
• The Professional: Léon almost makes it out of a standoff between himself and EVERYONE in the NYPD, but gets killed in a tunnel a few yards from freedom by the Big Bad. Though not before taking the Big Bad with him. "This is from... Mathilda..." BOOM!
• Le Pull-over rouge (The Red Sweater): Twenty-one-year-old Christian Ranucci is sentenced to death for murder on very, very circumstantial evidence. After exhausting his appeals, his only hope of escaping the guillotine is a pardon from the president of France. Cut to the radio issuing the news of Ranucci's pardon, his mother and lawyers celebrating with champagne, and a prison guard rushing in and saying, "Hey, little one! There it is, you're pardoned!" causing Ranucci to smile joyfully. Only, it's a hoax—and Ranucci is dragged from his cell at four in the morning the next day to be executed. Also Truth in Television.
• Quintet has one early in the film. Vivia has been shown to be pregnant, perhaps the last pregnancy in the human species. And then she's killed as collateral damage in the bombing of someone she'd first met less than an hour earlier.
• Towards the end of Rats: Night of Terror, the rats seem to be docile and Diana awakens from her coma and starts walking. Naturally, it's a trap and Diana eventually slashes her wrists.
• Recorded Live: Mr. Aaines is pursued by sentient film hungry for human flesh. He finds a magnet in a box labelled "Fun With Science" and it works in repelling the film. He then puts the magnet down as he tries to open a window to make an escape. This costs Mr. Aaines his life.
• Resident Evil (2002):
  • One manages to survive the first two passes of the Laser Hallway and the security system has almost been deactivated. Seconds before the laser is shut off, the third pass suddenly transforms from a single beam into an inescapable grid which kills him.
  • After the survivors obtain the T-virus antidote, it looks like they'll be able to save Rain Ocampo and themselves and get away. Then the Licker attacks and kills Kaplan, Rain turns into a zombie and has to be killed, and Matt's wound starts to fester and it becomes clear he's infected with the T-virus. As Alice is about to inject Matt with the antidote, Umbrella personnel break in and separate them before she can do so. Then it gets worse.
• Revolution (1985): The Continental Army looked like it was going to turn the tide in New York City. Unfortunately, the British drove them out of New York and it looked like the British had won.
• The Ring:
  • Has this at the ending of the film. Right after Samara Morgan's body is found you think everything is done and all is safe. However, the Creepy Child informs his mother, the main character, that "she never sleeps." The main character's male companion soon ends up dead because of Samara and they figure out that the only way to stay alive is if they make a copy of the video tape and spread it around. Talk about a cheerful flick.
  • This also happens in the Japanese film and the original novel, except without the handy foreshadowing. You're completely blindsided by things not turning out well.
• In Risky Business, Joel takes Lana on a date by the lake in his father's Porsche. Just before Lana leaves, she gets something out of the car and accidentally disengages the parking brake. After she leaves, the car starts to roll down the hill towards the lake. Joel tries to stop the car from falling into the lake. (He can't just get in and hit the brakes because the keys are locked inside.) Finally, the car rolls onto a pier, but stops just before going off the edge. As Joel is thanking God for stopping the car, the pier collapses and the car falls into the lake anyway.
• Road House (1989): A group of local businessmen gathers to discuss Wesley's excesses, and Pete Stroudenmire says he has a friend in the FBI he can contact to get Wesley shut down legally. In the next scene, Wesley reveals that he found out about Stroudenmire's efforts, and he has a monster truck driven through the man's auto dealership, demolishing the stock and cementing Wesley's hold on the town.
• Saving Private Ryan:
  • During the Normandy Landing sequence, a bullet hits the edge of a soldier's helmet, narrowly missing his skull. Astonished, he removes his helmet and gapes wonderingly at the holes... and then he gets shot in the head.
  • Somewhere in the same battle, a team of medics manages to stabilize a wounded soldier's condition in the middle of the fighting. As soon as they finish and it looks like he'll live, a bullet goes through his helmet and into his brain. The medics, not surprisingly, are pissed off at the Germans.
• In Saw, Zep is about to shoot Dr. Gordon when Adam suddenly wakes up, trips him, then crushes his head with a toilet tank lid. Good job! Jigsaw's dead, Gordon's family is safe and Adam survived his gunshot wound. Now all that's left is for Adam to get the key to his chains off of Zep's body. But, what's this? A tape recorder? "Hello, Zep." and suddenly the dead guy in the middle of the room starts to rise...
• Scarface (1983): The final fight has Tony holding out against the swarm of Mooks invading his mansion, and it seems that he might make it...then he gets riddled with bullets by the Mooks and a shotgun gets fired into his back by the only named assassin of the bunch (the Skull) and he topples over the parapet into the pool underneath, dead.
• See No Evil: When Margaret appears into Jacob's lair, it seems that Kira is saved. It's revealed then that Margaret has orchestrated the whole thing.
• Serenity (2005):
  • "I'm a leaf on the wind."
  • Hell, even the Operative gets one at the end, when He's finally cornered Serenity, and is taking a moment for some well-earned gloating. Then he sees who else is chasing Serenity.
• Sharkey's Machine: Sharkey (Burt Reynolds) is being tortured by a corrupt police officer when he suddenly realises he's still wearing his ankle holster — the bad guys wouldn't be that stupid, would they? Music swells as he slowly inches up his trouser leg...only to find the holster empty. The corrupt cop just smirks and says, "We searched your every orifice."
• Silence: Rodrigues tells the first four secret Christians shown being arrested to stamp on a picture of Jesus to avoid torture and execution, promising that both he and their lord will forgive them, and, while conflicted, all four men do so. However, this fails to satisfy the inquisitors, who try to force them to apostatize in further ways that they haven't been told is alright, leading to three brutal murders after only one of the four does so.
• Smile (2022): Rose confronts the Entity head-on, setting it on fire with an oil lamp and leaving it to burn with her childhood home. Exhausted but free from the curse, Rose goes to Joel's apartment and confesses how she realizes that she pushed him away because of her trauma. It seems that they will reconcile, and Rose asks Joel to stay with her until she falls asleep, which he promises....before his voice distorts and Rose realizes she's been imagining the entire thing. She's still inside her childhood home, still cursed, and Joel has arrived in time to provide the Entity with the witness it needs....
• The Z grade sci-fi action movie Space Marines has a rare villainous example right at the end. The Dragon Gunther yells "it's payback time!"...then the camera zooms out to reveal that he's surrounded by armed space marines. He adds "maybe not right now".
• Star Wars:
  • Luke's duel with Vader in The Empire Strikes Back. After spending the most of the fight getting effortlessly tossed around by Vader, Luke actually manages to hit him in the shoulder, making the viewer think he's got a chance a winning. Unfortunately, Vader immediately stops messing around and promptly takes Luke's hand off.
  • Towards the end of Episode VII: The Force Awakens, it seems like Kylo Ren is accepting Han Solo's offer to renounce the Dark Side of the Force and reconcile with his father, so he starts handing him his lightsaber... and activates it, impaling his father.
• Sunshine: Towards the end, Corazon finds a small plant growing in her burnt-out oxygen garden. They don't have to kill themselves! They can return home and have air! Whoops, got stabbed.
• Tell Me How I Die: Anna acquires the same precognitive abilities that the killer possesses, and during the climax she uses it to foresee his moves and save her boyfriend from being stabbed to death. Then it turns out that this was part of the killer's vision, and all he has to do is slightly adjust his pattern to render her effort null and void.
• The Terminal: Amelia is able to get Viktor a visa that would allow him to enter New York. Unfortunately, she had to go back to her lover, shredding any chances she had with Viktor. To make manners worse, it needs to be signed by Dixon, who has it out for Viktor after he broke the rules to help the guy with the pills, and threatens to destroy the careers of Viktor's friends if he tries to enter New York. Viktor would have left New York without accomplishing his goal... had Gupta not lent his mop to a plane....
• Terminator 2: Judgment Day: Used to very good effect near the end (but only because of the Big Damn Heroes immediately afterwards): Sarah Connor has the T-1000 close to a vat of molten steel, one of the few things that can kill it. Sarah has a fully loaded shotgun and she empties it into the T-1000's torso, knocking it back. As the music reaches its climax... She runs out of shells, and the T-1000 is still clear of the edge of the platform. Its wounds heal, and all hope is lost... Then the T-800 arrives with the grenade launcher.
• The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974): It looks as if Sally has escaped Leatherface and that the gas station owner she made it to has gone to get help. Unfortunately for Sally, it turns out the owner is Drayton, the patriarch of Leatherface’s family, who quickly incapacitates her and drags her right back to the Sawyer house.
• In Thirst (1979), the protagonist Kate Davis manages to steal an old Datsun truck and flee the Hyma Brotherhood compound, only to be found later and captured by the cult's goons.
• Thirteen Days: After more than a week of trying to figure out how to deal with the missiles in Cuba, Khrushchev sends a back channel negotiator to probe the possibility of a deal, then sends a message offering to remove the missiles in exchange for a promise not to invade Cuba. The problem seemingly on the verge of being solved, Kennedy sends his staff home, but before the night is out, another message arrives with a much more militant tone and the situation begins spiraling down all over again.
• Thirteen Lives has a subtle variant. A pair of cave divers have just located a group of missing kids trapped in the depths of a flooded cave, and returned to the surface with pictures to prove it. Word soon gets out, bringing hope to the kids' parents and other bystanders. Cave diver Rick Stanton is horrified by this, though; he knows just how insanely difficult it will be to get the kids out, and realistically has to think that they are going to die anyway.
• Played for Laughs in Top Secret!. Nick Rivers sends a man to the hospital, if the man dies he will face a firing squad.
  Streck: What is the condition of Sergeant Kruger? Very well, let me know if there is any change in his condition.
  Hangs up
  Streck: He's dead.
• In Two-Minute Warning a sniper is hidden at the top of a tower of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum during the final game of the national pro football championship and is battling the police that is trying to dislodge him. Eventually, he leaves his cover to return fire against a police helicopter and one of the SWAT sharpshooters finally hits him. Cut to the TV feed showing that the sniper is still alive and reaching for his rifle. Seconds later he starts shooting on the crowd of fans.
• The climax of Ultraman X The Movie: Here Comes! Our Ultraman!, which has the Ultraman trio consisting of Ultraman, Ultraman Tiga and Ultraman X fighting Zaigorg and his monster minions. Ultraman and Ultraman Tiga had emerged victorious against their respective foes, and X finally landed a Xanadium Beam that seemingly kills off Zaigorg... only for Zaigorg revealing himself to be Not Quite Dead, at which point it lashes out two Combat Tentacles grabbing X's comrades, before retaliating with a devastating attack knocking X off the ground. Then comes Hell on Earth as Zaigorg starts reviving hibernating monsters across the world...
• United 93 has a particularly painful example since it's very accurately based on the Real Life September 11 attacks. This applies more for the characters than the audience — anyone watching the film knows how it ends — but when the passengers realize that two men among them actually have flight experience, it really looks like they might have a chance of safely landing the plane.
• Vanishing on 7th Street: After having already swallowed up almost everyone in the city, the eldritch darkness antagonizing the few remaining survivors begins weaponizing this in order to drive them past the Despair Event Horizon. With the exception of two children, it works.
• War God have the humans' last weapons, a prototype Death Ray, which can melt titanium in seconds, being used on the Martian giants in the climax. It seems to have some effect, but the Martians shrugs them off and shoots back with their Disintegrator Ray.
• In The Windmill Massacre, Jennifer apparently kills Miller Hendrik for good ... only for him to somehow survive and claim her soul.
• Near the end of Without Warning (1994), the nuclear weapons launched at the second wave of meteors successfully neutralize the threat to Washington, Moscow, and Beijing. And Mission Control Rejoiced. Cue a rather silent Mass "Oh, Crap!" moments later, when a third wave of hundreds of meteors is detected, dooming all life on Earth.
• In the final scene of The Wolfman (2010), we see that Gwen is able to reach Lawrence and stops him from attacking her. It seems, for a moment, that Lawrence may actually pull through. That is, until the hunters show up, and break his moment of clarity, which inevitably forces Gwen to shoot him.
• The World of Kanako: The narrator finds temporary hope when he wins a swim contest and Kanako lets tha Matsunaga gang beat up his bullies. He believes that he can run away with Kanako and start a new life with her. He's completely mistaken about everything.
• X-Men Film Series
  • For a second in X-Men: First Class, you're led to believe that Darwin might just survive. Some fans posit that he did.
  • In X-Men: Days of Future Past, when Magneto and Storm combine their powers to throw the X-Jet into the horde of advancing Sentinels and detonate it to take them out. It looks like it worked... until Storm is impaled by a Sentinel and it's revealed that a large group of them have scaled the cliff from above and below for a surprise attack.

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