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Happy Ending Override / Live-Action Films

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Happy Ending Overrides in Live-Action Films.

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    #-L 
  • 28 Days Later: Jim, Selena, and Hannah all survive the zombie apocalypse and move to a safe area while the Infected from Britain starve to death and it becomes safe again. They are eventually spotted by a plane and rescued. Then, 28 Weeks Later causes another infection outbreak, this time reaching mainland Europe with no natural barriers to stop the zombies from overrunning Eurasia. Meanwhile, a comic series starring one of the survivors from the first movie reveals that Jim has been sentenced to death for his Roaring Rampage of Revenge on the soldiers who were trying to repopulate the earth by using his friends.
  • Alien franchise:
    • Ripley had destroyed the monster and escaped in a pod in Alien, but in Aliens she discovered that her ship wandered without a destination and she stayed in hypersleep for several decades. Doesn't seem such a downer until Ripley learns that she outlived her own daughter while she was in stasis.
    • The transition from Aliens to Alien³, in which Hicks, Bishop, and Newt, the three that Ripley fought tooth and nail to save in the previous movie, are killed off-screen before the opening credits. Bishop technically survives, but he's damaged beyond repair and permanently turned off by Ripley. James Cameron was horrified that the survivors from his film died horribly instead of being able to start a family (with the exception of Ripley), and Alan Dean Foster, the author hired to write novelizations for the series, went so far as to call this twist "obscene".
    • Alien: Resurrection completely negates Ripley's Heroic Sacrifice at the end of Alien 3 by putting alien DNA into the hands of another Corrupt Corporation.
    • While Prometheus certainly didn't end happily, by any means, it did end hopefully with the lone survivors—Elizabeth and David—headed towards the Engineers' homeworld for answers. In Alien: Covenant, it turns out David took a flying leap off the slippery slope, murdered Elizabeth, and horrifically mutilated her remains to help create the ultimate lifeform: the Xenomorphs. Shaw is long dead and David is now the Big Bad of the series.
  • Arthur 2: On the Rocks downplays this trope: Four years have passed since Arthur Bach and Linda Marolla got together and they're extremely happy, even getting ready to adopt a baby. The only real issue is that Arthur is still a Manchild, although he isn't drinking as much as he used to. But his ex-fiance Susan's father has been plotting to take control of the Bach family fortune during this gap. Once he makes his move, Riches to Rags ensues, with the villains cutting Arthur off and demanding he give Linda up and marry Susan to get it back, and ensuring that he cannot survive without it by cutting off any other ways he could make a living. The upside of this is that it spurs Arthur on to some real maturity that ultimately earns him and Linda a definitive Happily Ever After.
  • Batman Film Series:
  • The Blind Side, being Based on a True Story, had one due to real-life factors. The film ostensibly ends with Michael Oher being Happily Adopted by his foster family, but in 2023, Oher filed a lawsuit claiming they never adopted him, but instead put him under a conservatorship to take control of his money. While the case is still ongoing, the legal battle itself throws a major loop into this happy ending, to say nothing of what the case might end up revealing.
  • The Blues Brothers ended with Elwood and Jake barely managing to save the orphanage before being arrested. At the beginning of Blues Brothers 2000, Elwood discovers that the orphanage has been demolished and Jake died offscreen before the movie begins, in a case of The Character Died with Him.
  • Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Borat ends the first film happily remarried and (poorly) shares what he has learned in America to improve the lives of the people of Kazakhstan. By the opening of this film, Kazakhstan is a laughingstock to the rest of the world, Borat's family hates him, and he's doing a life sentence in The Gulag.
  • Candyman (1992) ended with infant Anthony being saved from the titular killer by Helen, who instead sacrifices herself to spare his life. The 2021 sequel follows Anthony in adulthood, but this time he ultimately falls victim to Candyman and becomes part of the hive.
  • Child's Play. The first three movies play the trope straight, as both the first and second movies end with protagonist Andy successfully killing Chucky and moving on, only for the Killer Doll to come back from the dead by the next opus, where it's always revealed Andy's life only got worse in the mid-time. Andy is Put on a Bus for the next two movies, but brought back in the sixth one, where the trope gets spectacularly subverted: Andy's situation finally got better (he reunited with his mother and lives a normal life), and when Chucky does find him again, Andy welcomes him with a shotgun. Ultimately played straight again in the following movie, Cult of Chucky: Andy is miserable and obsessed with Chucky at the onset, and by the end of the movie, Chucky has a human form and his latest murders will probably be attributed to Andy.
  • Clerks II ended with Dante and Randal finally satisfied with their station in life as the new owners of the rebuilt Quick Stop. Dante is also expecting a child with the woman he loves, Becky. Clerks III immediately reveals that Becky died at most a few months after the events of the last movie when she was killed by a drunk driver in an accident that also claimed her and Dante's unborn daughter. Dante himself then dies of a heart attack at the end of the movie, leaving Randal devastated.
  • Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo ended with him getting with some girl. The sequel, European Gigolo, reveals that the girld died after being eaten by a shark.
  • In Die Hard 2, McClaine saves Holly. In Die Hard with a Vengeance, their marriage is on the rocks and he had to move back to New York.
  • Final Destination is a splatter film series where every movie ends with a Downer Ending in which Death gruesomely murders the protagonists, usually after a fake-out happy ending. The two leads of Final Destination 2 are the only ones to get an unambiguous happy ending, as being killed and then revived in time seems to get them off of Death's list, and yet deleted scenes from Final Destination 3 show newspaper clippings revealing that they died in a freak accident sometime in between the two movies.
  • Flying Guillotine ends with the hero, Ma, killing the last of the elite Guillotine assasination squad and escaping with his wife and baby, where he can live a quiet, happy life in the countryside. In the sequel, a new league of assassins catches up with Ma, and in their attempt to kill him they end up killing Ma's wife and son.
  • Ghostbusters ends with the titular team defeating an ancient Sumerian deity, sending it back where it came from, and being hailed as heroes by a grateful city. Ghostbusters II opens up five years later with their reputation inexplicably in shambles, the partnership dissolved, a court order preventing them from offering their services, and some of them even being so desperate that they have taken to performing at birthday parties. Peter and Dana broke up too. Fortunately, the happy ending of that movie seems to stick, as Ghostbusters: The Video Game (which is considered canon) shows them still active a few years later, and the current mayoral administration having very Ghostbuster-friendly policies.
  • At the end of Ginger Snaps, while Brigitte did have to kill her sister Ginger, she managed to stop her own werewolf infection by using monkshood to cure herself. Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed reveals that the cure was only temporary, and Brigitte must keep injecting monkshood to stave off her transformation — and her body has built up a tolerance to it, necessitating ever greater doses in a manner that calls to mind drug addiction, complete with her spending the first half of the film in a rehab clinic, in addition to being stalked by a new male werewolf. There's no such happy ending for her this time, the film ending with her transformation complete and Ghost keeping her as a "pet" to eat her enemies.
  • Godzilla (2014) ends with Godzilla returning to the sea after defeating the MUTOS, and Kong: Skull Island ends with Kong still the king of his home, both triumphant notes. The opening moments of Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) then reveal that the Titans are being awakened at a dramatic rate, forcing Godzilla back into the conflict and setting the stage for a fight with Kong, as Skull Island is caught in the crossfire. The Monarch Corporation is also facing major scrutiny and public backlash for their role in the previous films. Then Godzilla vs. Kong overrides things further by the opening moments showing the public having largely turned against Godzilla, and Kong having grown so much that Skull Island can no longer sustain him. Most of the natives he protected have also died off, and a Corrupt Corporate Executive is trying to harvest resources by using one of Ghidorah's heads.
  • Halloween: Like A Nightmare on Elm Street below, any time it looks as though Michael Myers has been killed, the next installment brings him back. The most obvious example is after Michael is decapitated at the end of Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later, Halloween: Resurrection instead reveals that he's still alive because the one who was decapitated was another person he dressed up as himself. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers is another notable example, since Michael was last seen burning to a cinder after getting his eyes shot out in Halloween II (1981), but apparently he survived with only superficial injuries.
  • Herbie Goes Bananas, the fourth installment in the The Love Bug series, reveals that Herbie's girlfriend Giselle from the previous movie Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo did not survive a race accident taking place between the films. Perhaps out of guilt, Herbie¡s friend and driver Jim Douglas "gives" Herbie to his nephew - and also a race car driver - Pete Stancheck.
  • The Inbetweeners begins with Carli dumping Simon - overriding the Relationship Upgrade that had been hinted at at the end of the TV series. The movie ends on a rare positive for all four of the boys as they are in relationships - only for The Inbetweeners 2 to begin with them firmly back in their Crapsack World, all single except for Simon, and alas for him, Lucy has become the girlfriend from Hell. It's even implied that Will never managed to lose his virginity to Alison, although whether this is a joke or a statement of fact is open to interpretation.
  • Well, more like a Bittersweet Ending Override for Independence Day, given the death toll and the destruction, despite the defeat of the alien armada. But humanity survives and gets tons of alien tech to study. Twenty years later, Independence Day: Resurgence comes and reveals that an even larger alien fleet is on the way, and humanity's advances and efforts to integrate alien tech with Earth tech may not be enough to stop them. Also, Will Smith's character was killed in-between the films, while testing a hybrid fighter jet.
  • Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ended with Indiana being reunited with his First Love Marion Ravenwood, finally marrying her and being reunited with the son he never knew he had. Comes Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny which reveals that 12 years after the fourth film's ending, Indy and Marion are divorced after their son Was Killed Offscreen in the Vietnam War, turning Indiana into a Grumpy Old Man shortly before his retirement. At least, Indy and Marion get back together in the end of the movie.
  • The classic Soviet film The Irony of Fate ends with the two protagonists seemingly ending up together, with both of them ditching their Romantic False Leads. Skip to the sequel The Irony of Fate 2 30 years later (both in Real Life and in the film), and it turns out that the male protagonist simply went back to his fiancee, forcing the female protagonist to go back to the guy she dumped, who still haven't forgiven her for leaving him, even after 30 years of marriage. The previous film's leads haven't spoken or seen one another in three decades and have told different accounts of the story to their children. The sequel rehashes the first film's story, but in a modern setting, and the now-elderly former leads end up together, just like their children.
  • Jurassic Park:
    • The Lost World: Jurassic Park ends with InGen's plans to restart Jurassic Park thwarted and the dinosaurs are allowed to live out their days in peace on the islands. Jurassic World reveals that InGen tried to restart the park again and were more successful this time, rendering that ending basically meaningless. Supplementary material also states that Isla Sorna suffered a catastrophic ecological collapse offscreen due to Masrani Global's secret continued dinosaur engineering.
    • Jurassic World ends with the park abandoned once more and dinosaurs given free reign over the island (again), but in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom it turns out the island's volcano is going to erupt and render them all extinct for good. Also, they were able to make another weaponized hybrid dinosaur by recovering the Indominus skeleton's DNA. The film also ends with the dinosaurs now running loose on the mainland, which was explicitly stated to be a worst-case scenario nightmare in prior movies.
  • The Karate Kid: Daniel-san wins the tournament and gets the girl. Come the sequel, she's wrecked his car and dumped him for a college guy. Many years later, we find out that's not quite the whole story, but it still serves to undo a few of Daniel-san's gains in the original to make room for the sequel's plot.
  • The ending of the original Kick Boxer has the hero avenge his brother's death by beating the bully Tong Po and the film ends on a happy note. The beginning of Kick Boxer 2 has Tong Po murder the hero in cold blood, setting up the revenge story for the next younger brother. This wasn't the original script, but they changed it because the first film's star, Jean-Claude Van Damme, refused to return for the sequel.
  • Played with in Kingsman: The Golden Circle. In Kingsman: The Secret Service, while Eggsy's mentor Harry dies, the film ends with Eggsy, Roxie, and Merlin saving the day from Valentine's plan. Even his dog lives! Golden Circle opens with a missile strike that kills Roxie, Eggsy's dog, and most of the Kingsman organization. However, we do find out later that Harry didn't actually die in the last movie.
  • Kick-Ass ends with Dave having a loving girlfriend and Mindy starting a bright future going to school. During Kick-Ass 2, Katie dumps Dave and reveals that she had been cheating on him, and Mindy is an outcast at school and is unable to settle down and have a normal childhood.

    M-Z 
  • Men in Black: Agent K passes the torch to Agent J and moves on to a well-earned retirement with the wife he hasn't seen in decades, J forms a new partnership with L, and everybody wins! Then Men in Black II comes along and decides to completely rehash the original, so L breaks up with J and gets a transfer to the morgue, leading J to a series of unsuitable partners, before being forced to reactivate K, which is only made slightly better because K's miserable and can't remember that it's because he used to be a galactic sheriff for all of Earth, and has become so uncertain and wistful about the things he can't remember that the woman he longed for his whole life and finally got to marry left him. Yay?
  • Mortal Kombat: Annihilation not only completely invalidates our heroes' victory at the end of the first movie by having Shao Kahn invade Earth anyway despite the tournament being won (a result of Shinnok, the true Big Bad, manipulating things from behind the scenes), it also robs Raiden of his godly powers and brutally murders Johnny Cage in the first three minutes of the film.
  • In Muppets Most Wanted, all those millions of Muppet fans that appeared at the end of The Muppets (2011) to lend their support to the gang in their time of need?
    Rowlf: Actually, those were extras.
    Fozzie: I saw a few tapping their toes.
    Scooter: Yeah, those were paid dancers.
    Fozzie: ...Oh.
  • National Treasure: The first film ends with Ben helping The FBI arrest Ian and his men, getting the credit for finding the treasure along with his dad, Riley, and Abigail, starting a relationship with Abigail and not going to prison. But in the sequel Ben and Abigail are estranged and she has a new boyfriend named Connor.
  • Neighbors (2014): The first film ends with Teddy, realizing he needs to grow up and be an adult, getting a day job at Abercrombie & Fitch while taking night classes to boost his GPA. He also makes up with Mac when he runs into him outside the store. But then the sequel reveals that, thanks to the big party at the end of the first film, Teddy has a criminal record. So even though he's gotten his grades up and graduated, he's still stuck at his minimum wage A&F job while his college friends have gone on to bigger success because no one else will hire him. His resulting bitterness at his situation has caused him to develop some resentment towards Mac.
  • A Nightmare on Elm Street: As a Villain-Based Franchise, it's a given that Freddy will return to menace the heroes again in a new entry, which makes the protagonist's efforts in previous entries largely worthless. However, the meanest example is without a doubt the Series Fauxnale Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, which is set after a ten-year Time Skip after Alice's last encounter with him. By now, Freddy has slaughtered every living child in Springwood and turned it into a Ghost Town populated only by a few residents who have been driven to insanity by their grief, while planning to use the last surviving teenager to spread his influence to the rest of the world.
  • No Time to Die: The previous film, Spectre, ended with James Bond and his Second Love Madeleine Swann driving off into his retirement. Not long after, they're attacked in Italy by Spectre agents and Bond abandons her as a result of Blofeld's framing it to look like Madeleine set Bond up to be killed by Spectre, while she had nothing to do with it.
  • Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2: The first movie ended with Paul a hero and getting married to his Love Interest, Amy. The sequel opens with the reveal that Amy filed for a divorce less than a week later for unexplained reasons, and to make matters worse, a short time after that his mother gets hit by a milk truck one morning while getting the paper. At least Paul finds someone else (who's also a security guard) and Maya gets to go to her dream college at the end.
  • Pacific Rim ends with the Kaiju all dead, the Breach is closed, and at least some of the Precursors and their Kaiju-making machines are destroyed. But ... come the sequel, new Breaches are reopened, there are more Kaiju to fight, and The Mole warns that the Precursors will come again. And then by the time of Pacific Rim: The Black, the Breaches and Kaiju haven't just returned, they have taken over the world. The sacrifices and victories in the first movie are 100% moot.
  • The film Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl ends in the best possible and most uplifting scenario with the villains dead, Will and Elizabeth getting officially together and Norrington generously giving Jack a head start all of which is done with the approval of the Governor, who is the highest authority figure in Port Royal leaving nothing in doubt about the whole matter. Until Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest that is, where a higher authority figure named Cutler Beckett (Lord actually) does appear, who shares a history with both Governor Swann and Jack and proceeds to use this seemingly innocuous development to his advantage by taking over and sentencing all those involved to death by hanging for aiding a branded pirate - this also means that Will is forced to miss his own wedding. And all this in order to blackmail Turner into fetching him Jack's magic compass. Oh and the Isla de Muerta with all of the cursed crew's hoarded treasure sunk into the ocean, an old debt of Jack's comes back to haunt him. This leads to a far less happy ending and a lot of things that need to be fixed by the next film. In fact the second film manages to offer an alternate happy ending overriding case that doesn't lead to anywhere, since it shows Jack coming close to facing yet another mutiny from the same crew that seemingly accepted him as captain at the end of the previous film. Even Norrington is reduced to a drunken shadow of his former self since he failed to capture Jack and lost his station.
  • At the end of The Purge: Election Year, Roan had won the election against Owens, and her first move as president was to abolish the Purge. However, in The Forever Purge, not only were the NFFA reelected and the Purge reinstated, we now have those continuing the Purge long after the holiday finished.
  • Rambo IV ended on an optimistic note, with Rambo moving past his bitterness and cynicism to rejoin his family and society as a whole. In Rambo: Last Blood, while he did find peace and happiness, it was only temporary as his new life is completely destroyed by the Cartel and he's resigned himself to Walking the Earth as an outcast once more.
  • The Rocky movies love their Overrides.
    • Rocky ends with the title hero going the distance against the champion Apollo Creed, which is all he really wanted. They agree there won't be a rematch, and Rocky quits the boxing biz. Rocky II sees Balboa's endorsements and money from the fight run dry. Creed, his pride now wounded by skeptical fans, demands a rematch. Rocky, desperate to feed his family, has no choice but to take it.
    • After beating Ivan Drago at the end of Rocky IV, Rocky returns to the states in Rocky V, only to learn that he has lost all of his money and that he also has serious brain damage which could lead to his death if he ever fights again.
    • Creed: Last time we saw Rocky, he had finally made peace with both losing Adrian and not being able to box anymore, having one last fight that he manages to go the distance for which earns him both the respect of the crowd and his opponent, and he's also got his son, Paulie, and Marie as part of his life. By the time this film rolls around, Paulie has died, his son has moved to Vancouver, Marie's been Put on a Bus, and he's dying of Non-Hodgkins lymphoma.
  • Shanghai Noon ended with the heroes each getting the girl, becoming rich and both getting respected jobs as sheriffs. By the second film, the girls were gone, the money had been lost in a poor investment and while Roy had already left his job and become a waiter, Chon had to leave it in order to follow the plot of the next film.
  • Star Trek
    • Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan has what could be considered a "Villain Ending Override". At the end of the Original Series episode "Space Seed", Khan and his augments were exiled to Ceti Alpha V, which while savage, was lush and habitable, giving Khan a place to rule over. This movie reveals that just six months after, Ceti Alpha VI exploded, which devastated Ceti Alpha V and turned it into a barren, desolate wasteland, turning Khan's exile into a death sentence. Over the next fifteen years, the Ceti Eel would kill 20 of Khan's followers, including one he called "his beloved wife", and he would become consumed by vengeance against Kirk, the one who put him on the planet and thus indirectly responsible for the hell he and his followers endured, resulting in Khan enacting said revenge once he's able to get off the dead planet.
    • Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country ends on a high (if bittersweet) note, with our heroes, including Captain Kirk, heading towards retirement after saving the Federation and the galaxy yet again. Then Star Trek: Generations happens, and Kirk first gets chucked out of the Enterprise-B's hull into the Nexus, and then proceeds to be the trope namer for Dropped a Bridge on Him when he comes out to stop the Mad Scientist Soran from blowing up a sun in order to get into the Nexus.
    • Similarly, Star Trek: Nemesis ends on the hope that the Romulan Empire and the Federation will be able to put the past behind them and band together for the common good, even after the time they spent fighting. It never happens because Romulus of this universe was canonically destroyed by a supernova in the Continuity Reboot Star Trek (2009), giving Nero the impetus to screw around with the Alternate Continuity of the Abrams films.
  • Star Wars:
    • A New Hope ends on a triumphant note with the Rebels destroying the Death Star and receiving medals for it. Come The Empire Strikes Back and we learn that the celebrations were short-lived as the Empire's counterattack was swift and drove them out from their base, starting the darkest episode of the original trilogy.
    • Happens also in the Star Wars: Ewok Adventures of all movies. Caravan of Courage had a teenage boy and his younger sister team up with some teddy bears to rescue their parents from a giant. Within the first few minutes of Battle for Endor all the humans except the little girl are killed by Space Pirates, who go on to slaughter or enslave all but one of the Ewoks.
    • The Force Awakens:
      • The Empire has fallen, dealt a final blow shortly after Return of the Jedi, but sympathizers have worked behind the scenes to create a replacement for thirty years. The New Republic leadership doesn't take them seriously, so Princess Leia forms La Résistance with surreptitious support from old political allies to fight them as best they can. Until the New Republic is at best utterly devastated and at worst annihilated during the events of the film.
      • Luke's attempt at resurrecting the Jedi Order ended in total disaster when his nephew turned to the Dark Side and killed all the other apprentices. After several decades he is still the last Jedi, and has retreated into unknown space.
      • Han and Leia's ending. Not only do they lose their son to the Dark Side, devastating their relationship and sending them back to what is comfortable: Leia leading the resistance against the Empire-influenced First Order and Han back to smuggling, but it is overridden further when their son completes his fall by killing Han.
    • The Last Jedi continues this, having the First Order reigning the Galaxy with their losses at Starkiller Base in The Force Awakens barely slowing them down, the remaining Resistance members being picked off, Leia's call for help ignored out of fear, Finn and Rose's unsanctioned mission making things worse, and Luke Skywalker himself dying to help the last remnants of the Resistance escape.
    • The Rise of Skywalker continues the trend: Both Leia and her son die, but Kylo effectively ended up retreading Anakin's own redemption arc by sacrificing himself to save a loved one - and for that matter, Emperor Palpatine never truly died to begin with (and has been controlling the galaxy via a Puppet King in the interim), meaning Anakin's own Dying Moment of Awesome was rendered meaningless beyond saving Luke's life at that time (and as stated above, Luke had his own personal happy ending overriden). In fact, not only did Palpatine not lose in the original trilogy, rendering the whole Rebellion and all its struggles moot, he actually became explicitly far more powerful: by the Sequel Trilogy he controls both his former Imperial domain (via the First Order) and a huge never before mentioned Sith Eternal Fleet that's explicitly far larger than the Imperial Navy at its height. Oh, and every single ship in that fleet has a planet-destroying laser, so he basically has ten thousand Death Stars, rendering the conflicts of the previous films (to destroy a mere two Death Stars) totally meaningless. note 
  • A cross-media example: Superman Returns ends with Superman accepting that he has a biological son with Lois Lane, and swearing he will be there for him, successfully rekindling his relationship with all of the supporting cast after being away for five years, and saving the day from another scheme made by Lex Luthor. The Arrowverse Crisis Crossover event Crisis on Infinite Earths (2019) reveals to the audience that at some point in between Returns and 2019 The Joker got pissed off that the Daily Planet wasn't talking enough about him in their stories and massacred everybody in the building in revenge for this slight, with Supes himself confirming the deaths of Perry White, Jimmy Olsen, and Lois Lane. While Supes remains The Cape after this and still helps people (instead of exiling himself like he did in Kingdom Come, which this character arc homages), it's made very obvious that he's still hurting.
  • In Ted, the film ends with John and Lori getting married and Ted becoming store manager. By the beginning of the sequel, it's confirmed that John and Lori have been divorced for six months, Ted is a cashier again and loses his job due to his lack of legal rights.
  • Happens to James Cameron again in the Terminator series.
  • Top Gun: Maverick:
    • At the end of the first film, Maverick came to terms with Goose's death, symbolized by him throwing the dogtags he kept into the ocean; now we find out he's still struggling with guilt and grief until completing the mission and reconciling with Rooster.
    • Maverick seemed to have matured and be ready to accept a position as an instructor at TOPGUN; now we find out he lasted two months, and if his instructional style is the same as it was back then, no wonder.
    • Charlie seemed to have chosen remaining in Miramar, as a civilian consultant for TOPGUN, and with Maverick; now we don't find out what happened there, because she's not even mentioned, but given he seems to have a long history of being on-again off-again with Penny Benjamin, one might guess.
  • At the end of the first Transformers film, Megatron is killed; gets resurrected in the next one. Part of Sam's character arc in the second film is his refusal to tell Mikaela he loves her, but he finally does at the end. She dumps him between films. Transformers: Dark of the Moon has the Autobots emerge triumphant as seemingly all the Decepticons (including Megatron, Starscream and the long-absent Barricade) are killed. Transformers: Age of Extinction begins four years later, during which time humanity has turned on the Autobots and are now hunting them down to kill them. And their remains are used to create new Transformers controlled by humans. Including Megatron, who, as it turns out, is still alive.
  • TRON: Yay! Master Control was destroyed, Dillinger was busted, the Programs are free again, and Flynn's not only got his job back, he's the guy in charge! He wraps his arms around Lora and Alan and off they go into the sunset...TRON: Legacy opens, and Encom's back to being run by crooks, with Alan as the Only Sane Man in the room. Lora's nowhere to be seen (Expanded Universe material says she was Put on a Bus, which is actually nicer than her fate in the other sequel; the actress is trying to fix this). Meanwhile, Flynn's trapped by his own creation, has been fighting a Hopeless War for the equivalent of centuries, and has had to watch the genocide of a species. And just to frost the cake? Tron himself made an attempt at Heroic Sacrifice that turned into a Fate Worse than Death. Suddenly, the first film doesn't seem like such cheery Disney fare. Worse, TRON: Legacy veers incredibly close to a full-blown Downer Ending since over 2/3 of the characters are dead and most of the other 1/3 have dim survival odds at best. The only bright spot at the end of Legacy is that Sam and Quorra manage to escape alive.
    • The video game sequel TRON 2.0 is Lighter and Softer, but not by much; the comic establishes that Flynn apparently went nuts and vanished, Lora was killed by an accident in the laser lab with the part of her remaining in the system compiled into Ma3a, Alan has been exiled to a lab in the basement instead of a token position in the boardroom, Encom is on such shaky ground that a shady fly-by-night like F-Con can swoop in and buy them out, and Tron's fate is explicitly stated to be "unknown."
  • Venom: Let There Be Carnage: At the end of the previous film, Eddie and Venom seemed to have formed a fairly functional, relatively healthy mutualistic relationship. Come the first act of this movie, reality has set in, with quite a bit of tension and bickering between the two, until it finally escalates into a physical brawl and Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure that lasts throughout the second act.
  • X-Men Film Series:
    • X-Men: Days of Future Past zig-zags this trope. The bad: The cautious optimism that Professor X carried at the end of X-Men: First Class turned out to be short-lived. After just one semester, conscription for the Vietnam War forces Charles Xavier to close his school, which serves as the last straw that broke the camel's back. Losing his sense of purpose exacerbates the traumas he has experienced during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and he soon becomes a drug-addled recluse. The good: Thanks to changing history, not only has the Bad Future from the start of the film been averted, but Jean and Scott are alive again.
    • Logan itself overrides the ending Wolverine fought for in Days of Future Past, as it adapts elements of Old Man Logan, including mutants dying out, Logan as a tired old man, and seven of the X-Men being killed by an unknowing member of their own ranks (in the film's case, Professor Xavier during a telepathic seizure) leading to the dissolution of the team, the cure against the mutants succeed, and Logan and Charles die by the end of the movie.
  • In Young Guns, the surviving Regulators beat the bad guy and split up. Doc even moves to New York. In Young Guns II, Doc is arrested and dragged back to New Mexico. Chaves has also been recaptured. They both die.
  • Zoolander ended with Mugatu in jail, Derek and Matilda getting married and having a son, and the Derek Zoolander Center For Kids Who Can't Read Good finally being opened. The sequel reveals that Mugatu orchestrated the collapse of the center while imprisoned, which scarred Hansel's face and killed Matilda. Derek subsequently lost custody of his son, and retreated from the public eye to live as a recluse.

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