Basic Trope: The best of multiple possible endings.
- Straight: In Tales of Tropeland, making the good choice in all the major moral choices gets you the good ending.
- Exaggerated: If you get a perfect run and 100% Completion, the ending is far better than is realistically possible and solves several deep-seated problems with society that weren't even mentioned in the game.
- Logical Extreme: Same as Exaggerated, except you also have to do a Pacifist Run, a No-Damage Run and so on, plus every ending other than the Golden is a Downer Ending.
- Downplayed:
- If you beat all the basic plot-related missions, you save the world, but the Doomed Hometown is still gone.
- There more than one "Golden" Endings, but they all process at least one element that's less than ideal, and they are all mutually exclusive.
- Justified: The choices in Tales of Tropeland logically and realistically lead to the results they get.
- The "best" choice is not always the "right" choice, and the player can see their stats fluctuate based on their decisions. By keeping certain stats that imply high moral fiber and kindness, the player manages to finish the story with everyone alive, and during the Final Boss, your friends come to your rescue. During the credits, you get an epilogue of how everyone is doing.
- Inverted:
- Downer Ending: If you don't get at least one of the moral choices wrong, you die.
- Earn Your Bad Ending
- Subverted:
- If you get a No-Damage Run and earns 100% Completion, you got sent to an area infested by zombies and they come to eat you.
- The Golden Ending is only the second best ending you can obtain, and there is actually a secret Platinum Ending to be unlocked.
- Double Subverted: Turns out, all the zombies are cosplaying partygoers that entertain the player with some sweet treats.
- The "Platinum Ending" is an elaborate Joke Ending and Hilarious Outtakes rolled into one that doesn't actually solve the plot, but at that point, it doesn't really matter because you already got the best ending before then anyway.
- Parodied:
- The game generally had a Darker and Edgier tone. The perfect ending switches this to a saccharine tone.
- If you get a perfect run and 100% Completion, you get a Gainax Ending which doesn't even make sense.
- Zig Zagged: Beating the game with 100% Completion will send you to a gory scene where you got executed by law enforcers. But if you woke up, nothing happens and everything's still there. This is a Fission Mailed ending you don't expect to see.
- Averted: The game has several good endings with comparable overall goodness and different things that go right or wrong.
- Enforced: This rewards the player for doing very well.
- Lampshaded: "Doesn't this all seem a bit too perfect to you?"
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: The True Final Boss deliberately tricks the player into spending countless hours chasing after a "perfect ending", promising them that the Final Boss will be gone for good if they do. The Player Character then spends New Game Plus after New Game Plus sinking countless hours into a plan that is actually designed to drive the main character mad under the weight of countless timelines in their attempts to obtain the Golden Ending.
- Defied:
- The villain makes sure that even the best outcome is still not perfect.
- The best ending is obtained by accepting that there is no such thing as a perfect ending.
- Trying to get the Golden Ending by trying to do everything right ironically results in getting the worst ending in the game/
- Discussed: "As my adventure came to a close, I wondered. If I had the chance to go back and become closer with friends, would things have turned out better? Perhaps if I could start over and do things differently..."
- Conversed: ???
- Implied: Fridge Brilliance
- Deconstructed:
- Bittersweet Ending
- In your attempt to get a "Golden Ending", you end up going down a path that is empty and shallow. Your friends are all alive, but you have no real bonds with them and the entire playthrough is a balancing act of trying to keep them all onside. Your only rewards, if you can even call them that, are nothing more than a series of bad endings that get worse the further down the spiral you go. The absolute nadir of endings has the Player Character become the Main Character Final Boss, ensuring that nothing good came of your efforts.
- Reconstructed:
- Though the ending isn't as happy as it could've been, the good that came out of it is just enough to give the heroes the motivation to strive to create a better world.
- Depressing as those bad endings were, even they were necessary because they were required to unlock the Omega Ending.
- Played For Laughs: Everything literally looks golden.
- Played For Drama:
- In any of the other endings, the Player Character feels bad about the fact that he could have done better.
- The player character dies or is disgraced in all other endings. The game may even say "Ending 3/5", letting the player know they need to go back and do better.
- The Player Character is implied to have gone through many, many playthroughs trying to get the "Perfect Ending" only to eventually come to the bitter realization that no such thing exists, causing them to suffer an emotional breakdown that ends horribly for everyone involved.
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