A man who loves animated films directed towards a mature audience browses the internet one day and discovers an online forum dedicated to films that were mistaken as being targeted towards children. One such film in question is the infamous disaster film When the Wind Blows based on the graphic novel of the same name written by Raymond Briggs. Upon discovering that there was a darker ending to the film, the narrator decides to watch the "secret ending" via a link.
The story can be found here
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The fanfic provides examples of:
- Body Horror: The Bloggses develop welts all over their bodies as in the film, but it is also shown that Ron and his family were fused together in reference to Jim assuring his wife that Ron and his family would always stick together.
- Death of a Child: The first victims described to graphically die onscreen during the nuclear attack are a busload of schoolchildren. Later on, Jim and Hilda find the seared remains of a family of four after the explosion and, on account of famine, proceed to dine on their bodies.
- Despair Event Horizon: Unlike the film where Jim slightly had hope that the Powers That Be would save him and his wife, in the alternate ending, Jim dies whilst holding his wife's lifeless body, realizing that the Powers That Be have been destroyed and all hope was lost.
- Dies Differently in Adaptation: In this alternate ending, Hilda is shot in the back of the head by Jim as a mercy killing, instead of succumbing to radiation poisoning alongside him.
- Downer Ending: In the alternate ending of an already depressing film, Jim shoots Hilda in the back of her head with a rifle to spare her the pain of realizing that help would never come, and dies of radiation poisoning himself soon after, utterly consumed by despair as he cradles her body in his arms.
- Driven to Madness: In the film, Jim is harassed by an inner voice likely being his conscience for lying to his wife about the truth of their situation.Inner Voice: Old boy, why are you sentencing your wife to death?
- I'm a Humanitarian: The Bloggses' food ration, or whatever remained after the bomb dropped, quickly run thin, forcing the couple to eat the corpses of those killed by the blasts. Earlier, Jim contemplated killing his wife with a cleaver in his hungered mind, but relented at the last moment.
- Laughing Mad: Ron does this upon the realization that he and his family would die horribly from the nuclear explosion.
- No Party Like a Donner Party: The Bloggs are forced to eat a deceased family's burnt corpses to stave off starvation.
- The Nothing After Death: The film closes with the Voice making note of this after Jim and Hilda die and the "MAD" Morse Code from the original film is heard.Inner Voice: Old Jim died clutching his beloved wife to his dying breath due to radiation poisoning. But what he ultimately learned was that when you die... nothing happens.
- Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Besides how the pair die, the fate of the Bloggses is ultimately no different from the original film.
- Shout-Out: The narrator mentions Watership Down, Felidae and The Plague Dogs as other examples of unexpectedly dark animated films like When the Wind Blows when describing his fascination with them.
- Together in Death: Like in the original film, the Bloggs ultimately meet their end.
