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What happens when a work of fiction so old or so well-known that knowing its ending doesn't even count as spoiler is adapted into a new installment? Mostly the adapters choose to keep the main plot points, so the twist ending will stay, and thus there will be no twist at all. But that's not the only option!
Sometimes the production team do want the viewers to be surprised, and so they will change the twist at the end. This is, of course, especially prone to leaving plot holes if the producers do not change the rest of the plot that leads to the original ending accordingly, leaving the new twist hanging over the plot as if suspended by wires. When well done, though, it can lead to genuine surprise, a satisfying new resolution, and an excellent application of Death of the Author, in other words, awesomeness.
Due to this trope's nature, it's never too much warning that HERE BE SPOILERS. In fact, these spoilers are even more dangerous than the usual variety, since it's impossible to not spoil the twist ending from the moment the name of the work is stated. Proceed with caution.
Contrast with It Was His Sled, the trope that leads to this.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- The Comic Book Adaptation of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha The Movie First appeared to be an All There in the Manual affair for the first season (For those who don't know, The Movie First is a remake of that season), much like the A's and StrikerS comics that came before it. Indeed, this seemed to be the case until it reached the series proper in Chapter 5, where it gave a summary of the first Season, except that in place of Nanoha successfully befriending Fate and the two of them joining forces to stop Precia like everyone was expecting, Bardiche is destroyed, Fate never comes out of her comatose state for the final battle, Precia dies without giving Fate any sense of closure, and our last shot is of Nanoha crying about how she wasn't able to save Fate in the end, quickly revealing how this manga was actually another alternate retelling of the first season.
- Nanoha ultimately succeeds in befriending Fate after a sparring battle.
- While not particularly well-known, people who have read the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga will be surprised when watching the Toei anime, where many filler stories were given twists. For example, during the Burger World episode, the villain wasn't the robber, but rather the manager of the store. Or maybe more notable in the Tamagotchi episode, where the villain wasn't Kujirada, but rather an inconspicuous classmate who liked to keep people as pets, complete with whipping as a punishment and questionable rewards.
- Rei Ayanami NOT dying in Rebuild of Evangelion.
- It could still happen later on, of course. A better example is that Toji is not piloting Unit-03.
- Or, you know, that instead of unit 01 absorbing Shinji into itself and killing Zeruel monkey-style before shutting down, Shinji takes control of Unit 01 at its full berserk power, forcibly yanks Rei's soul out of Zeruel, and proceeds to ascend to godhood and nearly kickstart Third Impact before Kaworu stops him. Needless to say, some people were a bit surprised at these developments.
Comicbooks
- In The Amazing Spider-Man, Spider-Man's archnemesis, the Green Goblin, tossed Spidey's first love off a bridge in one of comics' most iconic moments. It was a huge twist when the comic was published (never before had a superhero let someone die, except in an origin story) and shocked many readers. Since then, however, whenever Gwen Stacy is present, it's become more shocking not have the Green Goblin kill Gwen Stacy.
- The most straight example of this is in the mini-series Powerless, which re-imagines, among others, Peter Parker becoming a cripple due to the spider-bite, rather than getting superpowers. When Norman Osborn kidnaps Gwen Stacy, they both fall off a balcony, but Peter manages to catch Gwen Stacy, saving her.
- In Spider-Man: TAS, the writers didn't want to include a character explicitly so they could die, and so Gwen Stacy was only present in the show as part of an Alternate Universe.
- It also really splits the difference when recreating the scene with Mary Jane: she's saved by a portal opening under her, but this just leaves her trapped in limbo. She later inexplicably appears again, but it turns out this is just a clone. Then the show was cancelled before we could see any closure to the storyline, though the final episode does feature the promise that rescuing Mary Jane is Spider-Man's next stop.
- There were explicitly no plans to have Gwen die in The Spectacular Spider Man.
- In Ultimate Spider-Man, instead of throwing Gwen Stacy off a bridge, the Green Goblin throws Mary Jane, and she ends up surviving.
- In the same continuity, Gwen Stacy is killed by Carnage instead of being killed by the Green Goblin.
- Played straight or averted in Marvel1602, depending whether or not you consider the spin-off, Spider-Man: 1602, canon. Virginia Dare is said to fill the role of Gwen Stacy, and she survives in the original mini-series, and it's heavily implied she and Peter end up together. In the spin-off, however, not only is she killed by Osborne, but Peter very quickly gets over her to get together with Marian Jane Watsonne, effectively restoring the status quo that the original mini-series worked to avoid.
- Also played straight with Marvel Adventures, in which Gwen Stacy is present, but her death is never explored.
Film
Literature
- "The Tortoise and the Hare" by James Thurber tells the story of a Genre Savvy tortoise who knows from reading books that in a race between a tortoise and a hare, the hare always loses. The tortoise finds a hare, challenges him to a 50-yard dash, and has proceeded less than a foot when the hare crosses the finish line.
Moral: A new broom may sweep clean, but never trust an old saw.
Live Action TV
- In the first season finale of Dexter, Dexter tracks the Ice Truck Killer down to a shipping container, which was the location of the final showdown between Dexter and his brother in the first novel. In the series, the shipping container is full of bananas Also, in the novel Dexter's brother escapes alive and Deborah finds out about Dexter being a killer. LaGuerta dies.. The first season ends with Brian's death and Deb remains in the dark about Dexter, while LaGuerta lives to continue to annoy Deb.
- The American Life on Mars.
- The 2009 remake of The Prisoner.
- The most recent TV adaptation of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple books.
- One stage performance of Monty Python's Parrot Sketch ends about 30 seconds into the sketch with Palin agreeing that the parrot is dead and giving Cleese a refund. This was also to reflect the improvement in returns stores would make.
- Palin also wrote about an ill-advised ad-lib in the sketch where he plays a man who goes up to a policeman played by Cleese to say his wallet's been stolen. The policeman apologetically tells him there's not much he can do, and after an uncomfortable pause the man asks, "Do you want to come back to my place?" and the policeman is supposed to say, "Yeah, all right." One night Cleese just said "no!" instead, which left them with nothing to do except slink offstage in a way that was no longer a punchline.
- One clip from The Young Ones appears to be setting up a rendition of the Pythons' "Cheese Shop" sketch. When asked if it's a cheese shop, however, the proprietor says "No", so the customer quips that they can't do the sketch after all.
- Being Human (Remake) plays around with this. Some of the plots taken from the original play out the same way as they did in the British version while others use this trope.
- In the season one finale the final confrontation with Bishop averts the big twist from the British season one as Aiden figures out what Jeff is trying to do and does not let him fight in his place.
- One episode of Midsomer Murders was pretty much a direct retelling of Hamlet... Except this time the Claudius-Expy gets wise to the Hamlet-Expy's plan and kills him.
Theater
- Agatha Christie adapted some of her novels into plays and often changed features. In her adaptation of Appointment With Death, she changed the identity of the murderer, while the stage adaptation of And Then There Were None kept the identity of the murderer the same (since he was the only one smart enough to have pulled it off), but replaced the original book's Downer Ending with a more hopeful conclusion.
- Several Greek tragedies, seeing as almost all of them were based on older myths that the audience was already familiar with. A good example is Euripides' Medea - in the original story, Medea's sons were killed by a mob of women in revenge. Having her kill them herself was a shocking twist at the time. Ironically, it's since become the most famous part of the story.
- West Side Story is based on Romeo and Juliet, but...Maria doesn't die, and Tony is murdered. And of course you have the Bowdlerised kiddie version of Romeo and Juliet where nobody dies.
- Shakespeare himself actually did that. In the story that King Lear is based on (which the audience would have been familiar with), Cordelia survives. Shakespeare killing her off changes the ending from bittersweet to bleak. Futhermore, in the original Danish legend of Amleth, the title character kills his wicked uncle and has a glorious reign as king.
- One production of Rent changed the ending so that Mimi actually does die, as in La Bohème.
- The fact that Rent had originally changed the ending of La Bohème to have Mimi survive is also an example of this trope.
- The musical adaption of Wicked has one that subverts the expectations of those who have read the book, or are even even slightly familiar with The Wizard of Oz by giving the Wicked Witch of the West a Disney Death instead of her famous melting death. Elphaba never displaying an aversion to water in the play could have been subtle foreshadowing to this, as well as the idea of water as a weakness being mocked: "'Water will melt her'? People are so empty-headed, they'll believe anything!"
- The German stage version of Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame has Esmerelda die, nixing the Happily Ever After ending from the movie.
- That's what happened in the original Hugo novel. BIG Downer Ending!
Theme Parks
- The haunted house adaptation of the 2010 Wolfman film at Universal Orlando's Halloween Horror Nights event in 2009 was the first hint anyone got of the ending of the film: the werewolf gets shot. In the house, however, the fatal shot is performed by a nameless hunter.
Video Games
- The video game of Peter Jackson's King Kong ends with the titular ape falling from the Empire State Building to his death. However, this then unlocks the final level where you can blast the US Army planes to bits and take Kong back to Skull Island.
- The ending of Afro Samurai was changed greatly from the anime. Might have just been Rule of Fun, though. Ninja Ninja even says that just because you watched the TV show doesn't mean you know what's going to happen here.
- To be fair it's more in tune with the Manga Ending which came before the anime after all But The only reason you fight Justice is to avoid The Anticlimax ending that the manga had.
- In The Matrix: Path of Neo, after the final battle between Neo and a lone Smith, instead of Neo willingly sacrificing himself to nullify Smith, all of the Smiths combine into one giant Smith to serve as the final, final boss. At this point, the Wachowskis literally stop the game to explain that while a sacrificial ending works for a movie, it wouldn't be very satisfying in a game.
- In Jeanne d'Arc, it's pretty much a Foregone Conclusion that the Maid d'Orleans will be burned at the stake. How did Level-5 Studios handle a game where the main protagonist and primary player character is meant to die halfway through? By temporarily replacing her via an El Cid Ploy, so that the impersonator is the one killed instead, freeing Jeanne to continue through the rest of the campaign incognito.
- How Silent Hill 1 ends (or perhaps more accurately, which of the Multiple Endings is canon) is made pretty clear by its direct sequel, Silent Hill 3: Harry survives the crash (and all the subsequent weirdness) and succeeds in getting Cheryl back (more or less). The remake, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, plays on the players' (assumed) knowledge of this by having the big twist be that Harry died in the car crash after all and the whole game has taken place in the grown-up Cheryl's mind.
- In yet another Agatha Christie example, the video game adaptation of And Then There Were None begins to diverge radically from the book at Emily Brent's death by actual bee sting, as opposed to lethal injection. When Wargrave turns up most unambiguously dead, all hope for the original book's ending is lost. The real killer turns out to have been Emily Brent all along, a.k.a. Gabrielle Steele, an actress who took her method acting too far and was possessed by Madame Borgia while playing the role in a movie; the events on Shipwreck Island are all her plan for revenge against Wargrave, the man who sentenced her lover Edward Seton to the gallows. Thankfully, finishing the game gives you a chance to see the original book's epilogue, which reveals Wargrave as the murderer and explains his methods and motivations in a much more satisfying fashion.
- The NES Rambo game based on First Blood Part II has an alternate ending where Rambo saves his Vienamese love interest Co, and then he turns Murdock into a frog.
- Two distinctly different versions of how Kalecgos becomes the Aspect of Magic for the Warcraft universe exist. In World of Warcraft, a player on the Dragonwrath questline, with help from Tarecgosa, uncovers Arygos plotting with Deathwing. Tarecgosa sacrifices herself, but Kalecgos becomes Aspect and makes you the Dragonwrath staff, forcing Arygos to flee. In Thrall: Twilight of the Aspects, Thrall is Kalecgos' ally, and after Kalecgos becomes Aspect, Arygos is killed by Blackmoore.
- In Dead Rising 2, it is revealed that Sullivan was the mole that framed Chuck. In the re-make, Dead Rising 2: Off The Record, they change this to Stacy, who was your Mission Control in the original.
Western Animation
- The newest installment of the Spider-Man series, The Spectacular Spider-Man, the Green Goblin's secret identity was changed in a way that older fans could believe no change was made, until The Reveal.
- And after The Reveal, it turns out his identity wasn't changed. It was Norman Osborn all along, framing his own son.
- In the comics, a reporter at the Bugle, Frederick Foswell, was also the Diabolical Mastermind the Big Man in his first appearance. In this series, The Big Man is L. Thompson Lincoln, a Composite Character of Kingpin and Tombstone and Foswell is just an Intrepid Reporter.
- Also, Word Of God says that they would not have killed off Gwen Stacy if the series had gone on. (Though there were vague plans for a possible direct-to-video movie where they might have.)
- The DCAU uses this to good effect sometimes. For instance, in his debut in Batman: The Animated Series, Bane attempts to break Batman's back in the same manner as in the comics, but Batman manages to disable him first.
- Think Hawkgirl will be exactly what she says she is, and is known to be in the comics: a police officer from another world? Guess again.
- Likewise, the first time Doomsday (the creature that "killed" Superman in the comics) shows up in The DCAU, he faces an alternate-universe Superman who has few scruples, and wastes no time whatsoever lobotomizing Doomsday with his heat vision.
- In the first Scooby-Doo animated film, not only are the zombie pirate monsters real, but they're the good guys.
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