Surprisingly Happy Ending

Towards the end of a work, it seems like the ending coming up is going to be bittersweet if not a full-blown downer; but a sudden plot-twist comes around that yields a happier ending than one could have logically expected.

Writers should take into account that when used badly, as the result of an especially jarring Genre Shift or Deus ex Machina, this trope is more annoying than heartwarming, and should be written carefully. Done especially poorly this can become an Esoteric Happy Ending (where the writer thinks they've pulled a happy ending off without realizing the darker implications of the story/setting remain unresolved.)

Note that while the happy ending is logically a surprise to the characters, it might not be one for viewers.

May be invoked via Earn Your Happy Ending.

Contrast to "Ray of Hope" Ending, which is a mainly bad ending that has some glimmers of hope in it, and Sudden Downer Ending, its direct opposite. Shock-and-Switch Ending is a subtrope for when this is played as a subversion of Sudden Downer Ending. May overlap with Tear Dryer.

Note: This is a Spoilered Rotten trope, which means that EVERY SINGLE EXAMPLE on this list is a spoiler by default and most of them will be unmarked. This is your last warning, only proceed if you really believe you can handle this list.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The final episode of Angel Beats! is extremely bittersweet, with the remaining cast making peace with their deaths and moving on to their next life, and the revelation that Kanade received a heart transplant from Otonashi after his death and was staying in purgatory to thank him. Then comes The Stinger, where Kanade and Otonashi are able to meet up again in their next life.
• Arc the Lad II had one of the most crushing video game endings of all time, with the Dark One destroying 9/10ths of the world and Arc and Kukuru dying to seal him away. The anime of the game keeps many of the dark moments, but the ending is far happier than the game's. In the anime, Arc and Kukuru live, and the Dark One is defeated without destroying the world.
• Cute High Earth Defense Club LOVE! manages this. Episode 11 ends on a real cliffhanger, with the two teams of magical boys finally facing off over the wreckage of the school, in what's become clear is a personal battle between Kinshirou and Atsushi. Come the finale, however, the whole thing is revealed as an Immoral Reality Show, the Terrible Trio refuse to play along any further, and Kinshirou practically kisses and makes up with Atsushi, as lampshaded by Shipper on Deck Ryuu. The school is even magically repaired. And somehow it all works.
• In The Familiar of Zero, this happens at least twice:
  • In the second season of the anime, Saito makes a Last Stand while Louise is taken aboard a refugee ship. Cue Louise's Heroic BSoD when she realizes Saito is dead. But later, he reappears, claiming that an elf brought him back to life.
  • In the third season, it appears the heroes have successfully escaped a Fate Worse than Death...except that they've taken refuge back in Tristain, where they are wanted criminals. At the trial, Queen Henrietta sentences them to wear mantles, which for all practical purposes is a pardon.
• Kanon: After a long series of tragic relationships where everyone the main character loves is emotionally crushed and put at risk of death, in the end Ayu's miraculous wish saves them all at once.
• Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's leads up to a massive downer ending (Hayate's knights are killed, she herself is consumed by the Book of Darkness, which proceeds to destroy the Earth, along with the entire Team Nanoha), which is averted in the last moment by Hayate managing to assume full control over the Book — and by firepower, lots and lots of firepower. In the end, only one life is lost (Reinforce, the benign will of the Book), but the majority of the damage is averted. Throughout the subsequent seasons and other sequels, this event is universally seen as a miracle.
• In contrast to its predecessor Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury notably has one of the most upbeat endings in the whole franchise. The heroes are able to stop the threats of Quiet Zero and the Space Assembly League's Kill Sat without a single drop of blood being shed on either side, Prospera is convinced to give up quest for vengeance, and by using her authority as its president Miorine dissolves the Benerit Group to break the oppressive economic stranglehold on Earth. Three years later she and her former classmates are leading their respective companies toward more altruistic pursuits that don't involve war profiteering, and while Suletta suffers long term debilitating effects from piloting the Gundam Calibarn she's indicated to be on the road to recovery and she and Miorine are Happily Married. Even Eri managed to miraculously survive the destruction of the Gundam Aerial by being transferred into Suletta's Mr. Hot keychain!
• Late in My-HiME, the main characters are turned against one another, resulting in all of them losing their Childs, and with it, their most important people. Even Mai, who stays in the carnival until the end, ends up losing her brother and the boy she loves when the Himes closest to them are defeated. However, as a result of a plan set in place earlier, Miyu shatters the pillars, resurrecting the dead and enabling them to take down the Obsidian Lord together, and the series ends happily with everyone moving towards their futures.
• The final episode of Nurse Angel Ririka SOS is a non-stop Tear Jerker, but after trying so hard to get the audience to break down in tears from all the tragedy and noble sacrifice, the show goes out on a positive note. Ririka succeeds and survives. The only question is if her friends remember her.
• Parasyte ends with what first appears to be Shinichi failing to save Satomi from falling to her death. It is then revealed that what appeared to be her falling was actually a hallucination the hopeless Shinichi had in his mind, convinced that he wouldn't be able to save her. In fact, Migi succeeded in catching her after only falling a few feet.
• Princess Tutu sets itself up for tragedy in-universe, with the threat of a Shoot the Shaggy Dog to render everything meaningless and the author in charge of the in-universe story openly pulling for a Downer Ending where Tutu vanishes, the Prince re-shatters his heart, and everything the characters worked for amounts to nothing. Thanks to the power of hope, it ends on the happy side of bittersweet, as the characters defy their fate and defeat the Raven, Mytho and Rue are happily married inside the story, the machine used to make it is destroyed, and while Ahiru is forever a duck, she stays by Fakir's side and both are happy with their lives as the town and the people move on.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica:
  • After many deaths over the course of the series, and a seemingly hopeless final battle in which Madoka either perishes against Walpurgisnacht or becomes a witch even more powerful than Walpurgisnacht, Madoka chooses to become a magical girl, making a wish to destroy all witches before they are born, including the one she will eventually become. As a result, she rewrites the world into a more hopeful one where magical girls fight wraiths and simply disappear when their time is up, at the cost of vanishing forever and becoming hope itself.
  • The Rebellion Story has Homura, unsatisfied with the show's Bittersweet Ending, altering the entire system by overthrowing Madoka and taking her place as a Satanic Archetype, putting Madoka's happiness over everyone else's. In doing so, Madoka and Sayaka are restored to life, as is newcomer Nagisa, and Homura reduces Kyubey to a quivering, raggedy mess. The only problem with the scenario is the "Homura becomes the devil" thing. Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Walpurgisnacht Rising suggested this would end up as a Happy Ending Override.
• Despite Yuki, Rii, and especially Kurumi having a lot of death signs throughout the Zombie Apocalypse-themed manga School-Live!, the manga ends with everyone surviving.
• Steins;Gate has multiple endings based on what you choose throughout the course of the game, but going by the anime, Okabe has completely resigned himself to Kurisu dying in order to save Mayuri, and for nearly the entirety of episode 22, that's what we think. Until that damn Post Credits Scene reveals that Suzuha has returned to help Okabe save her in order to stop the Third World War. Apparently, her megalomaniac father killed her and stole her time travel thesis, which prompted an arms race between countries to perfect time travel first, and they all ended up destroying each other in their quest for power. After being forced to accidentally kill Kurisu himself because he needed to personally feel what was at stake, he finally manages to save her, stop her father from publicizing the thesis, and convince his past self that she actually died, so as to prompt him to text Daru and make sure all this happens at all.
• This is what happens in Stepping on Roses. Souichirou crashes Sumi's forced wedding to Nozomu and takes her away, while Eisuke and Mr. Ijuuin explain the Brother–Sister Incest deal in public, destroying Nozomu's intentions. Souichirou and Sumi re-declare their mutual love, and they get together again. In a not-so Distant Finale they're still together, Sumi works as a teacher while Souichirou is starting to rebuild his company (with Eisuke taking care of Souichirou and Sumi's newborn child alongside their adoptive siblings), and a back-to-sanity Nozomu has gotten back together with Miu, and they're both expecting a child of their own.
• Sugar Dark is a horror story about a young man who was imprisoned for the murder of an Asshole Victim that he didn't commit. He meets a girl Blessed with Suck and is faced with Nigh-Invulnerable Eldritch Abominations. Even so, the story ends with the heroine having her First Time in the Sun and living with the main character to be Wealthy Ever After.
• Tiger & Bunny managed to pull this trope twice in the final two episodes. In episode 25, Kotetsu gets up after his heroic sacrifice to reveal he hadn't died and had only passed out from the pain. A few minutes later, him and Bunny tell their friends they are going to retire from the hero-life, only to Time Skip a year forward with them both returning to the Hero business.
• The Xenosaga anime (and the first game it's been adapted from) ends with KOS-MOS seemingly sacrificing herself to save Shion and the rest. Then, however, she comes back, battered but otherwise fine. It's still a Bittersweet Ending, since Kirsche died by Heroic Sacrifice earlier on, but not the Downer Ending it could have been.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL: Most of the main and supporting cast members had died leading up to the series ending and it looked like some were gone for good...but the Numeron Code brought back everyone, including people like Kaito who had a regular death as opposed to a "transformed into energy for Barian World" death.
• Yuki Yuna is a Hero seems like it could only end in a Downer Ending at the end of episode 11. In the middle of the final episode Yuna saves everyone and their Sange-induced disabilities are reversed, however it cost her, as she's comatose. Even the Bittersweet Ending is averted when she comes to and it just goes into Happy Ending territory.

Comic Books

• Flashpoint Beyond: In spite of being a sequel to Flashpoint (which consisted of an Alternate Timeline to the DC Universe taking place in a Crapsack World where the characters we know either met horrible deaths before going down their destined paths or became very dark villains or antiheroes) and the main plot being about Flashpoint Batman having to stop his wife Flashpoint Joker's killing spree targeting metahumans who have the potential to change the past, the miniseries ends with the world united against a Kryptonian invasion with Flashpoint Superman on their side and hope to change for the better, in addition to Flashpoint Joker being on the road of receiving the professional help she needs as well as her and Flashpoint Batman getting another chance at parenthood after the loss of their son Bruce by adopting Harvey Dent's son Dexter (who becomes the Flashpoint timeline's equivalent to Robin).
• Idées Noires is a series of short stories (usually unrelated to each other) designed to be as depressing as possible, each one of them terminating in a Downer Ending. Many strips even provide a Hope Spot, only to horrifically subvert it. In the very last strip, however, the protagonist manages to escape his prison without any cruel twists. His last words, to the readers, are "Sorry, no bad ending today".
• Tintin: Red Rackham's Treasure has the heroes return home with none of the titular treasure, although they do have parts from the wreck of the Unicorn and a huge supply of incredibly-aged rum as well as Marlinspike Hall now under Captain Haddock's ownership after buying it with Professor Calculus's patent money as thanks for helping him test his submarine. However, a wander around the basement reveals that Sir Francis Haddock actually hid the treasure there, upgrading this to Earn Your Happy Ending as Haddock opens a maritime gallery in celebration.

Fan Works

• Tom spends about half of The Day the Earth Stood Still worrying that his house has been destroyed and Homer (the family dog) is dead. Turns out that's not the case.
• In Jessica, the title character forgives Cameron for smashing his Pokémon Yellow cartridge, and thus causing her death. This outcome is by no means obvious before it happens.
• By the end of Light Of Hope, a Sonic the Hedgehog fanfic, with Nyx having fallen in a large body of water and unable to swim, it appears to be headed for a Downer Ending in which Nyx allows herself to drown because her love interest, Infinite, will likely be imprisoned for a lifetime because of what he has done, despite his Heel–Face Turn. Then Infinite hears of his girlfriend drowning, rushes out of the prison to rescue her, and forces in all the mouth-to-mouth respiration he can do, to the point he passes out. It again appears to lead to a Downer Ending when Nyx believes he's dying. Suddenly, Infinite wakes up, the Resistance forgives him and sentences him to years of community service instead, and Nyx and Infinite are so happy that they're finally free to be together.
• Never Say Goodbye, a Zootopia fan comic, ends on a surprisingly positive note after its two extremely bleak and depressing predecessors. In I Will Survive, Nick and Judy have a heated debate over abortion that ends with them breaking up. Its sequel, Born To Be Alive, then shows Nick trying to apologize and get back with Judy, only for this to backfire horribly when he learns that she's moved on and found a new partner, culminating in Judy kicking Nick out of her apartment—and her life—forever. Never Say Goodbye, however, shows that Judy and Nick have since managed to make peace with each other, and they're now Amicable Exes. They've also each started a family of their own, and managed to independently accomplish their goals, with Judy being elected mayor of Zootopia, and Nick having become a scout master. In a Double Subversion, the epilogue appears to set up a Sudden Downer Ending where Judy is assassinated by her political opponents, only for her death to just be A Bloody Mess, leaving her unharmed.
• With the Anyone Can Die structure of Danganronpa, as well as its bleak nature of hope and despair, it's surprising that A New Hope (Danganronpa), which follows the same premise, ends on a higher note than most of its canon entries: the survivors escape to a recovering world, and some even bear children in this new era. Adding to this are its characters Spared by the Adaptation, most of whom were given tons of Character Development.
• In So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, A-D'oh, the Simpsons' financial troubles are seemingly at an end as Homer gets promoted and Marge plans to open her own art gallery.

Films — Animation

• Disney's Aladdin. Under the laws of Agrabah, Princess Jasmine had to marry a prince. At the end of the movie Aladdin was no longer a prince so Jasmine couldn't marry him. But wait!
  Sultan: Well, am I Sultan or am I Sultan? From this day forth, the princess shall marry whomever she deems worthy.
• Cars 3 at first seems like it's going to have a Bittersweet Ending since Lightning gave up his place halfway through to Cruz, thus causing him to lose the bet with Sterling and has to retire because of it. However, since he started the race and she finished it under the same number, both are considered joint-winners, thus he wins the bet and gets to keep his career and becomes Cruz's teacher as well, giving the film an absolutely wonderful ending.
• Coco: At first, the movie seems like it's going to end bittersweet as Coco is dying and forgot Héctor almost completely, and Miguel has tried as hard as he could to get her to remember him. Fortunately, he remembers his guitar he brought back and uses it to play "Remember Me", which is what rejuvenates her and causes the ban on music to be lifted, Ernesto to be forgotten, and Héctor's legacy to become famous, ending the film on a wonderful note.
• Exchange Student Zero, with the battle now done, Hiro, Amonsun, and Happy Peach Flower must leave their world so everything will be at peace. But since Principal Rogerson and his son Leroy, along with Denmead, are also transported into the world of Battle Day Zero when everyone/everything else was going back, the number of cards with the characters in them are complete, and them as the remaining three are now allowed to stay.
• The House (2022): After the two previous downer endings, the third chapter ends on a happy note with Rosa setting off with the other tenants into the floodwaters, using the House as a makeshift boat.
• Lilo & Stitch. Just after Stitch saves Lilo, the Grand Councilwoman arrives to take him away. Even after Stitch shows signs of being reformed, the Councilwoman points out that the law is absolute. Then Lilo points out that she bought him at the shelter, and that taking him away would be stealing. The Councilwoman then declares that Stitch will serve the rest of his sentence on Earth, under the care of Lilo and her family, and as an added bonus, because of this, Lilo's family is under intergalactic protection, meaning she can't be taken away by child services, which she was initially facing.
• Monsters, Inc. seems like it's about to have a Bittersweet Ending in the form of Sulley having to part ways with Boo, but it turns out that Mike recreated the door that leads to her room, so Sulley can at least still visit her.
• In The Peanuts Movie, Charlie Brown is on the verge of a typical Downer Ending for him, as he was unable to catch up with the Little Red-Haired Girl before she leaves town for summer camp, thus he won't be able to know why she picked him as his pen pal or how she feels about him. But then the Kite-Eating Tree takes pity on him and returns his kite, and his luck begins to turn around from then on, ending the movie on a triumphant note.
• In The Princess and the Frog, it looks like Tiana and Naveen will be stuck as frogs, only to discover that them marrying makes Tiana a princess, thus giving her kiss the power to turn them back.
• In Tangled, Flynn cuts Rapunzel's hair, freeing her from Mother Gothel, but also making it impossible for her to heal him. He dies as a result. But as she cries over his body, it turns out her tears contain the last of her healing powers.
• In WALL•E, although EVE manages to repair and reactivate WALL•E, his memory and personality seems to have disappeared for good...until EVE kisses him.

Films — Live-Action

• 28 Days Later — After fighting off zombie-esque infected humans throughout the entire movie, Jim, Hannah, and Selena barely escape a military base gone mad, with Jim being shot in the stomach in the process. Hannah and Selena rush Jim off to a deserted hospital, where he falls into a coma. In brief flashes, Jim is shown struggling for life, one wonders how long Hannah and Selena can survive given the constant threats surrounding them, and at one point you see Hannah and Selena spell out in bed sheets on a hillside what appears to be, "HELL," leading the audience to believe it is a dire situation. However, the mood ultimately turns cheerful when it is revealed the words being spelled out is actually, "HELLO," an airplane spots them, and a rescue helicopter is ordered to take Hannah, Selena, and a recovering Jim to safety. This was done because test audiences hated the original Downer Ending. Originally, Jim dies of his injuries, and it ends with Selena and Hannah walking down the hall into the light of the outdoors. Although it was meant to symbolize their will to live, the test audience took it as a symbol of their hopeless inevitable death.
• A.I.: Artificial Intelligence is an extremely dark film for the most part, but it has a controversial happy ending, involving David spending a day with a clone of his mom made by highly-advanced robots whose existence was not foreshadowed previously in the film. True, his mom can only stay for a day, but so does David.
• Similarly to its animated counterpart, in Aladdin (2019), Aladdin is no longer a prince since he used his last wish to free Genie as he promised. Instead of the Sultan nullifying the law preventing his daughter's marriage, he opts to abdicate the throne instead and name Jasmine his successor, enabling her to change the law herself.
• All the Right Moves, a 1983 sports drama starring Tom Cruise, makes it seem like the protagonist Stefan is going to be doomed to the dead-end, miserable life in Ampipe he so desperately doesn't want, due to being blacklisted from most of his college opportunities. Then his former coach, who has taken a new job at Cal Poly, realizes that he was wrong is blacklisting him and offers Stefan a football scholarship there, which he accepts. However, there is a bit of a tarnished lining in that Stefan will most likely have to leave his family, his girlfriend, and his friends behind, since they will all spend the rest of their lives stuck in Ampipe.
• Arctic could probably set the record for holding back on revealing its a last-minute happy ending. By the end of the movie, Overgård has exhausted himself and all his resources trying to escape the Arctic with the woman, and can only watch helplessly as a nearby helicopter seems to ignore them, even when he burns his jacket in a last-ditch attempt to catch their attention. Deciding he's reached his limit, Overgård lies down, ready to die — and the last shot of the movie is the helicopter touching down a couple of feet behind the two.
• The original version of Arthur (1981) ends with the title character deciding to choose his true love Linda over the $750 million inheritance he will only receive if he goes through with the Arranged Marriage with Susan. The lovers are lucky to get out of this decision alive when his Grande Dame grandmother stops Susan's father from murdering them over this. Later, Arthur and Linda are discussing their future together and how he intends to get a job...whereupon said grandmother says that no member of her family will be working-class, and tells him he can have Linda and the money. It's teased that he'll turn his back on the fortune anyway, but it turns out to be a quick prank he's playing on Linda and his driver ("I'm not crazy!"). Thus he gets everything without having to substantially change who he is, save that he's taken responsibility for his happiness in hand. Notably, the 2011 remake goes with a more realistic Not His Sled Earn Your Happy Ending instead — Arthur doesn't go through with the arranged marriage but then finally earns his fortune by getting a job within the family business, and then makes himself truly worthy of his sweetheart by cleaning up his childish ways and getting on the wagon.
• Assassin's Creed (2016): Relative to the video games' endings in general. The modern day portions of the games have been Pyrrhic Victories at best, but Callum's story ends on an unambiguously happy note, reconciling with his Assassin heritage, finding closure with his mother's death, taking out the CEO of Abstergo Industries, retrieving the Apple for the Assassins and officially being inducted into the Brotherhood.
• In The Baby, a horror-psycho-drama 1973 B-Movie, the film ends on this sort of ending, though perhaps slightly more towards Ambiguous Ending. Baby Wadsworth has been rescued from his insanely misandric mother and siblings, who have conditioned him into never mentally developing beyond infanthood and given a comfortable new life with the Gentrys. He even has a new playmate. The final shot is of the two of them splashing around in a pool together. It's almost enough to make you forget that Baby's playmate is Ann Gentry's husband, reverted to incurable infancy as a result of brain damage from a car accident, or that the Gentrys killed the Wadsworths in order to take Baby as their own, and the pool is actually erected over the Wadsworths' concealed grave.
• Back to the Future Part III looks like it's going to end with Marty and Jennifer never getting to see Doc and Clara again, with Doc having eschewed the opportunity to go back to 1985 with Marty. However, while Marty and Jennifer are looking at the wrecked DeLorean, Doc shows up in a time-traveling train with Clara to greet the two, and reveals that they're Happily Married and have raised two children. Even though Doc's happy with living in the late 19th and early 20th century, he can go visit Marty and company whenever he wants.
• Bad Santa, despite being a very cynical and bitter Black Comedy ends on a happy and optimistic note, with the Jerkass main character surviving his apparent death and becoming a better person thanks to his friendship with one kid.
• Black Swan: A bit more ambiguous than most examples, but still counts. After the physical and mental Trauma Conga Line she endured throughout the production, Nina gives an amazing final performance and collapses from what seems like a self-inflicted stab wound, feeling she's finally achieved perfection. Word of God has confirmed that not only does she survive, but that her injury is symbolic of her becoming a woman. This means not only did she excel at a role she desperately wanted and everyone, including Lily, is absolutely proud of her, she can finally break free of her controlling Stage Mom and get the psychological help she absolutely needs.
• Bob Le Flambeur is a movie about a casino heist. After Inspector Ledru and the police are tipped off, it seems like the robbery will end badly like most every heist film ends. It does end badly for most of the gang, but not for Bob. After Bob gives in to temptation and starts gambling while waiting for the others, he wins an enormous sum of money. This causes him to be late for the rendezvous. He charges out the front just as his gang is exchanging shots with the police. As Ledru is taking them away, Roger points out that with a good lawyer Bob will beat the rap—after all, he didn't rob the casino and wasn't actually seen to do anything illegal. Bob, who now has a whole bunch of money won from the casino, and also has gorgeous Anne waiting for him at home, cracks that he'll sue the cops for damages.
• Brassed Off: The pit has closed. A thousand miners are unemployed. Phil has tried to kill himself, Danny is dying in hospital, and the only thing he might live for is the band winning the final, but even taking part is impossible, because it would cost three grand. Everything is looking very bad. And just as the group are mulling this over, Gloria suddenly donates the money she has earned to the band, so they can take part in the final after all.
• The Japanese schoolgirls' subplot in The Cabin in the Woods ends with the girls singing a magic song that transforms the vengeful spirit into a happy frog.^note That is, if one ignores the film's actual Downer Ending where everyone in the world dies.
• Crush has a wonderfully surprising one for the side-plot: Bess being revealed as simply a sweet, romantic teenage girl with an obsessive streak that she can and will keep in check. She realizes that what she did came close to stalking, that Scott's girlfriend is a Good Bad Girl deserving of his love, and he might be a Jerk Jock, so she gets better. She unfriends him on Facebook, throws away all her memorandums of him, and has her first kiss with another boy, who already liked her and was a little bit stalky too. Too bad the real stalker is out there and she was the only one able to help him...
• A classic last-minute example in Defending Your Life: Just when it's Daniel's Darkest Hour having learned the Celestial Bureaucracy will have him reincarnated on Earth to overcome fear over a lifetime, he sees his Love Interest Julia, who's been advanced, on a nearby tram and decides to escape his tram to get to her thinking he has nothing to lose at this point. Barely hanging on to the tram doors, it's then revealed it was all a Secret Test of Character with that same bureaucracy monitoring his actions. Having decided Daniel ultimately overcame fear, they allow him onto the tram with Julia where they both Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence.
• One of the writers of Edge of Tomorrow stated that once the movie gave more focus on the comedy, they had to end in a way that wasn't harsh. Hence Cage's Taking You with Me moment to kill the Omega also allowed him to reset to the day before the mission. And the Omega is dead all along in this new timeline, meaning all the kills from the Suicide Mission were undone. Cage will also have a chance at building a relationship with Rita in peace.
• Godzilla Minus One: In spite of the Downer Beginning and rather grim middle act, the ending of the film is surprisingly uplifting despite the odds. The plan to kill Godzilla works (at least, for now) without any of the characters dying, Shikishima is able to put his guilt to rest without giving his life, Sōsaku forgives him for what happened on Odo Island, and Noriko turns out to have survived the destruction of Ginza.
• With a tagline as brutal as "One Will Fall", Godzilla vs. Kong implies a tragic ending, especially with the director's insistence of a clear winner. The victor is Godzilla, who soundly defeats Kong fair and square...but then, Mecha-Godzilla attacks, and trounces Godzilla— but with the humans' help, Kong is revived, the two defeat Mecha-Godzilla together, and the film ends with Godzilla still as the victorious King of the Monsters...and Kong finding a peaceful new life as a ruler of the Hollow Earth, despite his defeat at Godzilla's hands.
• Hot Fuzz ends up with Angel is seen cradling a wounded Danny after a surprise suicide attack by the final perpretator at the police station, then the film cuts to Angel visiting a gravestone with the name "Butterman", implying Danny is killed in action. Turns out it's Danny's mother's grave, and he is alive, standing behind Angel.
• The Guest House: At first it looks like Amy and Rachel are done. Then after the latter initially breaks up with her, she meets Amy again later. They kiss and proclaim their love for each other.
• In The Jerk, Navin recounts his Rags to Riches to Rags story, and the film looks like it's going to end with Navin languishing alone and forgotten in poverty. That is, until his Love Interest Marie and his adoptive family show up for a more proper Happy Ending by bringing him home, which has been upscaled thanks to his father investing the money Navin gave the family throughout the film.
• Just Another Girl On The I.R.T: The high school protagonist with a troubled home life is hiding her pregnancy and then gives birth to her daughter in the freaked-out baby's father's dorm room. Initially, she had placed the baby girl in a plastic bag and set it on the curb, but both of their consciences made them go back for her and go to the hospital to get them both checked out. In the end, not only is the little girl healthy and thriving, her mother ends up in college, her previously workaholic parents help her raise their grandchild and she and the child's father happily co-parent her.
• The One: Gabe manages to defeat Yulaw nonlethally, preserving the multiverse's stability, and ends up in an idyllic Los Angeles where he meets an alternate version of T.K., showing his life will take the same track but even better. Meanwhile, despite being exiled, Yulaw prepares to tear the Hades Universe a new asshole and looks happy as a clam about it.
• Savage Man, Savage Beast: After an hour and a half of violence, bloodshed, and general madness, this 1976 mondo film concludes with footage of Swedish conservationist Erik Zimen and the wolves he wishes to save, showing a rare example of humanity and the natural world living together in peace.
• Searching looks like it's going to have a Downer Ending with David's efforts to find his missing daughter being All for Nothing with an ex-con confessing to murdering her, until a stock photo causes David to realize that the murder confession was actually a frame-up by the detective in charge of the case and his daughter turns out to be alive after all.
• Secrets & Lies: Once Roxanne gets over the shock of finding out about Hortense, she actually starts to warm up to the idea of having her as her half-sister.
• Another zombie movie example: State of Emergency. After an entire movie following four survivors holed up in a rural warehouse surrounded by 28 Days Later-style fast zombies created by a biochemical accident, the aversion of nearly every Downer Ending trope we've come to expect from a zombie film is downright surprising. Despite some earlier arguments, the survivors don't turn on each other. The one who was dying is cured by medicine recovered from an air drop. All four of them survive, and lonely protagonist Jim, who lost his girlfriend at the beginning of the film, realizes that he can finally consider the other three to be true friends. And on top of that, the military proves to be neither malevolent nor incompetent. They let the survivors go, and it even looks like they've got the zombie outbreak under control.
• Taxi Driver shows the protagonist, Travis Bickle, slowly descending into madness over the course of the film, culminating in him trying to assassinate a politician. After his attempt fails, Travis goes to a hotel and starts a shootout to rescue a child prostitute he had met earlier (and to get himself killed), killing three people and taking several bullets. He passes out as the police close in, apparently succumbing to his wounds. The next scene shows him recovered from his wounds, still working as a taxi driver but seeming more at peace with his life, with a letter telling him the girl was rescued and reunited with her family. The switch is so dramatic that many take it as a Dying Dream.
• In 2012's The Three Stooges: The Movie, just as it seems the Three Stooges have failed to save their orphanage from closing down due to their incompetence, they notice that a second one has been built next to it that has everyone in it that use to work/live at the old orphanage. As it turns out, thanks to Moe's work on Jersey Shore, the writers and producers used Moe's money to buy a new, better orphanage while he was working.
• In Two Brothers, two tigers have escaped back into the wild, but the two main human characters are afraid that the tigers will become man-eaters if they never learn to hunt animals. At the last minute, the two tigers reunite with one of their parents, so now they have a tiger to learn hunting skills from.
• The Visitor: Apart from Barbara getting paralyzed and a few scratches at the end, she is mostly fine. Jerzy and his group destroy the cult and manage to bring Katy to the Christ-like figure and she seems to have turned over a new leaf. It is among the happiest endings in a European horror movie and with no sequel hook either.
• Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps has Gordon Gecko play everyone like a harp and make a billion dollars during the worst financial crisis in US history save the Depression. He then, more or less, plays Santa Claus to his estranged daughter and the film's protagonist—buying back their affection.
• In the 1928 classic The Wind, the protagonist is raped by a man who she shoots the next day. Letty was already undergoing Sanity Slippage before that due to being in near complete isolation. Her husband comes back home and suddenly there's a happy ending where Letty comes to terms with living in a perpetually dusty plains town and being in a Marriage of Convenience. This was actually the result of Executive Meddling. The original ending was going to have Letty go mad and walk into the dust storm. It was decided not to go with a Downer Ending.

Literature

• In 616, it's revealed that God is actually Satan and that every soul in Earth is condemned to Hell. Then the protagonist, who went mad from the revelation, makes an improbable Heroic Sacrifice to save a little girl, and it turns out that this was all that was needed for Satan to give God His place back and make everything good again.
• The Biggles stories started out in the First World War, and do a pretty thorough job of presenting the endless, hopeless, nature of the fighting. New pilots join the squadron and die; veteran pilots are bitter and jaded old men of nineteen or twenty. The last story in the collection The Camels Are Coming is entitled The Last Show, and it soon becomes clear that it means exactly that — Biggles is shot down over enemy lines, and scrambles from the wreckage of his plane into a mob of angry German soldiers who are just starting to give him a beating when their officer intervenes. At first it seems like he is doomed to captivity, and then — with the last line of the book — the German gives him the news: An armistice was signed half an hour ago. The war is over.
• The Black Company: Through the final tomes of the saga, the last characters that still remember the first book get killed off or simply die of old age. Croaker is once again the Company chronicler, but he keeps remarking on how old he is. Then other narrators of the story get killed. To save the world, they need to kill a sleeping Physical God, but even if they succeed the Lady will lose the rest of her magic, as she is currently leeching it from Kina. Their child, "Daughter of the Night", turns out beyond redemption, and as the ending approaches, it looks more and more like the story will end with all the characters dying while the new Company marches on to forge its own destiny. Then the two witches that Croaker jokingly "adopted" develop actual feelings towards him. And then he becomes the new guardian of the Plain of Glittering Stone, getting an immortal golem body with an ability to observe all 16 worlds, a dream of any historian, and with enough magic to fuel the Lady's powers to boot. As the two girls take over as the chroniclers, it might still be somewhat bittersweet, but by the world's standards a shockingly happy ending.
• Crime and Punishment: After 400 pages of misery the book has a surprising upbeat ending, with Raskolnikov and Sonya falling in love and implied that they will marry when Raskolnikov gets out of prison after seven years. Controversial, to say the least.
• The Dark Forest: It's a story about humanity horribly outmatched against an imminent Alien Invasion, establishes that the entire universe is full of paranoid, genocidal civilizations, and seemingly no hope in sight. And yet it ends with humans and the invaders, the Trisolarans, ultimately calling a truce when their conflict threats to reveal both their existences to the rest of the galaxy. The Trisolarans exchange their technology with humanity, who manages to build gravitational wave transmitters, and Luo Ji, a researcher who converses with them, reunites with his wife and daughter after they awaken from hibernation. He also converses with a Trisolaran who suggests that love may be a universal concept, and maybe they can help it grow. The following book, Death's End, pulls a Happy Ending Override, unfortunately.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Deep End: As it turns out, all the other campers abandoning Campers' Eden during the second storm allows the Heffleys to finally have a wonderful vacation over the next few days.
• Girl: "Who are you?" Alien: "Er, I'm an alien.": After discovering that everything she's been through was simply a failure at a Happy Place that twisted into reliving her trauma, and that she was responsible for the death of her parents, the girl is Driven to Suicide - the cherry on top is that the alien insists she's also a figment of the girl's imagination, and leaves her to die by herself. However, the alien comes back in the nick of time to tell the girl she lied and that she really was the girl's only piece of reality. The alien saves the girl's life right as she's dying and gives her a new body so she can continue to live, then the alien takes the girl to the alien's ancestors' home planet, Earth, where they can live peacefully.
• One of the short stories in Alice Munro's Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage is about a down-on-her-luck woman traveling to see a man she believes is in love with her when in fact he doesn't even know she exists and his love letters to her were all sent by a pair of teenage girls who didn't want her to be crushed by never receiving a reply from him. This can only lead to disappointment and heartbreak for the woman, right? Nope; the man turns out to be lonely and glad for the company and the woman decides that it would be best not to bring up the letters with him, and it ends with Babies Ever After and one of the girls in on the love letter plot wondering at how everything turned out all right in the end.
• A surprisingly happy ending for a subplot happens in The Night Circus. It looks as if Chandresh has been left mentally destroyed from the years of being brainwashed by Marcus into not noticing the strange things going on in the circus. When Poppet meets him at the end though, she kisses him on the cheek and helps him get started on a new project. It's implied that her odd power helped fix him up enough that he at least can continue onward with the same energy he once had.
• One of the stories of Eugene Trivizas, The Night of the Banana Peel, has the protagonist, Little Anne, throw a banana peel in the middle of the street. Most of the book has her rightfully worry she can bring disaster if the peel gets in the way of an army march, or a wedding parade, or a circus parade, which will result in many innocent people getting hurt. So, at night, she runs to pick it up during a storm only to find she was too late. Fortunately, the person who stepped on it was a dangerous criminal, and Anne was praised for his arrest.
• In the eighth novel of the Outlander series Written In My Own Heart's Blood, after all the fighting and death, the end sees Jamie, Claire and family (Jaime's sister Jenny, Jenny's son Ian, his wife Rachel, Jamie's grandson Germain and new adopted addition Fanny) ensconced contentedly back at Fraser's Ridge, with the assorted families left behind (the Higgenses, the Beardsleys, and the Weymess) all doing quite well. Then as a literal last scene, Jamie and Claire are sitting outside and down the road come their daughter Brianna, her husband Roger, and their children Jem and Mandy, back from the future presumably to stay.
• In the last book of The Roman Mysteries, Flavia is exiled from Italia and must leave behind the place where she has grown up all her life. However, at the last minute, her love interest shows up and says that he is going to go into exile with her, leaving behind a promising political career and faking his own death just to be with her.
• The Spanish classic poem "Romance De Gerineldo" ("Gerineldo's Romance"), featuring the Secret Relationship between the Spanish Infanta (Princess of Spain) and the titular Gerineldo (the King's favorite page) has several different versions... and surprisingly, several of them finish with either the King willingly forgiving Gerineldo for sleeping with the Infanta, or the Infanta revealing their romance but managing to convince her dad to let them marry.
• Roys Bedoys: In "Don't Spoil Surprises, Roys Bedoys!", Roys spoils Wen’s surprise party and she fails at convincing her friends she’s surprised, but then she becomes genuinely surprised when she gets earrings as a present rather than the necklace Roys thought he was going to buy her.
• The book The Saddest Little Robot appears to end with the eponymous robot's Heroic Sacrifice, complete with the words "The End". What follows is an additional chapter where Snoot comes back to life.
• In The Silver Chair, it looks like Eustace and Jill will be left to deal with the bullies chasing them. Then, Aslan gives them and Caspian swords and a riding crop and sends them to smack sense into the bullies. That fight also leads to the incompetent headmistress getting fired, because of her trying to find a lion seen on the school grounds.
• The Song of Achilles: The entire ending of the book is very bleak. With Patroclus dead, Achilles becomes a mad man only interested in revenge against the man who killed him and spending every night crying over his lover's corpse on his bed, when he finally finds in himself to send it to the pyre and gets his revenge, he becomes a Death Seeker, going into battle armorless so some warrior will finally kill him. By the time he is finally killed, his sociopathic son shows up and refuses to follow through with Achilles burial instructions, which makes him go to the afterlife, but without proper rites, traps the ghost of Patroclus on the land, indicating that they'll never be able to be Together in Death as they planned. It's only on the very few final pages that Thetis, Achilles's mother that always hated Patroclus, has a change of heart and carves his name on Achilles's memorial, permitting him to pass on. The final paragraph of the novel describes their shades finding each other again in Hades, together at last.
• Wings of Fire: At the endo f the first arc, where first it looks like Clay is going to die and then that Blister is going to win, but Peril heals Clay and Thorn becomes queen instead.
• Wuthering Heights: Toward the end of the book (and at the beginning, given its How We Got Here structure), everything seems bleak for all the inhabitants of Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff owns both the Heights and Thrushcross Grange, his widowed daughter-in-law Cathy lives effectively as his prisoner while rightful Earnshaw heir Hareton is reduced to servitude, and the rest of the Earnshaws and Lintons have all died, yet not even Heathcliff can enjoy his successful revenge because of his endless grief for Catherine Earnshaw. Yet the ending turns out not to be so bleak after all. Cathy and Hareton overcome their Belligerent Sexual Tension and fall happily in love, Heathcliff loses the will to harm them any more because they remind him too much of Catherine and himself, and a few days later he mysteriously dies, leaving Cathy and Hareton to inherit his property and fortune, and (it's implied) finally reuniting with Catherine.

Live-Action TV

• 13 Reasons Why: For a show that was consistently grim to the point of being a near-constant Trauma Conga Line for the cast, the ending of Season 4 managed to be surprisingly positive. Although Justin tragically dies (which had been set up from the first episode of this season), everyone else is moving on to a bright future, having gotten into college and/or getting the careers they wanted, have found love or the promise of a new relationship, they don't have to deal with Liberty High anymore and none of them face any legal consequences for the various laws they've broken, up to and including murder.
• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: After multiple seasons of Trauma Conga Line for almost everyone and several bittersweet season finales, including the originally intended series finale in season 5, season 7 pulls off a shockingly happy grand finale where Everyone Lives, the villains are defeated through the power of empathy, and Fitz and Simmons break their curse and get to finally be happy together.
• The Devil Judge: The corrupt politicians and businessmen are killed and a new government is formed, Ga-on is still a judge, and Yo-han faked his death and left with Elijah.
• Doctor Who:
  • In "Forest of the Dead", after River Song's Heroic Sacrifice, just as the Doctor is about to leave the library (and the viewer expecting the episode to end), it turns out the sonic screwdriver River left him can be used to save her inside the computer, saving her life. It's still bittersweet, but less than it would have been should the episode have really ended in the former note.
  • The ending of Series 6, "The Wedding of River Song". Time is no longer going to unravel, but it happened at the expense of the Doctor's life. Except that it wasn't the Doctor who died, it was simply the Tessalecta disguised as the Doctor. Although none of the viewers actually expected it to happen.
  • At the beginning of "The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe", Reg is presumed dead and Madge hasn't told the children. Near the end of the episode, Madge has saved the lives of the tree spirits and brought herself and her children back to the correct time and place. The audience gears up for a Bittersweet Ending as Madge starts to tell the children about their father... and it turns out that Reg survived, thanks to Madge's actions.
  • "The Zygon Invasion"-"The Zygon Inversion" involves a war brewing between the Alien Among Us Zygons and humanity, whom the Doctor helped broker peace between. A radical Zygon faction desires to drop the masquerade even if they will end up dead at the hands of humans. The human side has an itchy trigger finger ready to go; both sides seek the hidden means of achieving their goals. In the end, said means don't actually exist, but the leaders of the two sides are brought to the same place in the process of searching for them. The Doctor then convinces both sides that war is not the answer and that peace, however imperfect, is worth maintaining via a heartbreaking monologue. Even happier? He convinces the villain to have a Heel–Face Turn, who stands down her forces and becomes a new second Osgood, giving the bereaved one a "sister" once more!
  • "The Husbands of River Song" has a denouement that reveals that the Doctor and River's adventure here has brought them to Darillium — the site of the last night they spend together, for the Doctor knows their next meeting will be in a certain library. But a more-sweet-than-bitter Bittersweet Ending ensues: not only does the Doctor complete the stable time loop by giving her the sonic screwdriver that will "save" her in the library here, it turns out that nights on Darillium last twenty-four years!
  • The Series 10 finale "The Doctor Falls" gives one to Bill Potts. The previous episode ended with them fully Cyber-converted, something the Doctor cannot address due to circumstances, and which traditionally is a death sentence in this franchise. But in the denouement her lost love Heather, who has regained her sentience since her transformation into a Pilot creature back in the season premiere, turns out to have been tracking her all along and turns her into a Pilot creature too, restoring her original body in the process. They set out to travel the universe together. For bonus points, this sets up the circumstances that allow the Twelfth Doctor to regenerate, though it takes him one more episode to accept it and do so. The Expanded Universe Novelization of that episode, "Twice Upon a Time", goes on to confirm that Bill went on to live a full, rich life with Heather, and died on her own terms, and also reveals that Nardole and the solar farmers managed to defeat all subsequent Cybermen advances, with the cyborg eventually living to over 700 years old before he died.
  • In the classic series episode, "City of Death", The story ends with almost all the copies of the Mona Lisa being destroyed, except for one that likely has the writing that the Doctor wrote on the board in felt tip marker, "THIS IS A FAKE." Unlike Duggan, that doesn't bother the Doctor in the least since a copy of a painting by the original artist is not a fake, and anyone who would want to bother x-raying the painting to find his writing to determine its monetary value doesn't appreciate the real value of art anyway.
• Kamen Rider:
  • Kamen Rider Double: When it seems like Philip is gone for good and Shotaro has to move on without him, Wakana sacrifices herself to restore Philip.
  • Kamen Rider Build is easily one of the darkest Kamen Rider seasons, particularly once the final arc begins and the Riders start dying one-by-one. So how does it end? Everyone gets revived in the Reset Button Ending and lead happy lives in the "new world." Sento and Banjo are the only ones who remember what happened, but they at least have each other. The final scene is the two of them optimistically riding off to explore the new world. The post-series V-Cinema films take this a step further by having the rest of the cast regain their memories, allowing Sento and Banjo to reunite with them. The only downside is that the Big Bad comes back too, he seems content to leave Earth and not cause further trouble.
• The extremely dark and violent final season of The Musketeers ends with a thoroughly happy ending for all the sympathetic characters who survive: Queen Anne becomes Regent of France, firmly in charge of her son's future, and appoints Aramis as her first minister, so he can also be there for his son and for her. Porthos reunites with a single mother he befriended in a previous episode, he is appointed general in the army and proposes to her. Athos resigns as captain of the musketeers, returns to his country estate with a pregnant Sylvie and hands over the captaincy to D'Artagnan. All four Musketeers are finally happy in love and with a better position as Happy Ending music plays over the credits.
• The Outer Limits (1995): In the episode "Replica" a husband and wife team of scientists are working on cloning human organs when the wife is rendered comatose in a lab accident. Three years later, with the wife declared brain dead, the husband illegally clones her. When the original miraculously regains consciousness, the clone (who will be destroyed if anyone finds out what she is) realises that if she kills the original she can take over her life and marriage. So far, so standard. However, after the inevitable cat-and-mouse throughout the couple's home and Spot the Impostor scene, the two women suddenly realize the obvious solution: clone the husband. The originals get on with their lives, and the clones live Happily Ever After together in the couple's isolated vacation home.
• Star Trek: Enterprise: The three parter "Augments" episode ends on an unusually positive note. Although the Augments are defeated, Arik Soong (grandfather of Dr. Noonian Soong) is simply incarcerated. But while in prison, he changes his research interests to artificial intelligence. He also remarks that the fruits of his research may take a generation or two. That research, whatever it is, is implied to lead to the 24th century's Soong creating the android Data. This is significant as the episode made no indication that he had fathered any children previously. So it is possible that sometime before his death, he will be released from prison.
• Virtually every season finale of Supernatural ends horribly for the main characters, and even in finales where they more or less win, there's always a steep price to be paid for the success. At the end of season 11, it looks like God is about to die, which will ultimately also cause the demise of his sister and the entire universe unless Dean pulls a Heroic Sacrifice to kill Amara too, which will bring back the balance necessary to keep everything spinning. So even if things go well, at least one character is doomed, whereas if things go poorly, everyone is doomed. Instead, Dean convinces Amara to reconcile with God, they both thank Dean and float happily off into the ether, the universe is saved, Dean is fine, and on top of everything, Amara resurrects Mary Winchester in gratitude. Everybody Lives, and the characters are now actually better off than they were before the season started. The only problem that crops up is that the British Men of Letters send an agent to arrest the Winchesters for the crap they keep pulling, which is minor in comparison to the happy ending they just got handed, and which they kind of deserve anyway.
• Thunderbirds: In the episode "Ricochet", after the camera suddenly cuts from Alan Tracy cutting through the inner airlock of the KLA Satellite to Thunderbird 2 where Virgil Tracy and Brains are preparing to shoot KLA down, Virgil suddenly hears Rick O'Shea's voice on Thunderbird 2s radio, so it seems Thunderbird 3 failed to rescue Rick O'Shea. In a last ditch attempt to save both Rick O'Shea and an oil refinery, Virgil and Brains literately use Thunderbird 2 like a bumper car to catch KLA on its starboard wing and fly it to safety. However even though Virgil saved the refinery, it appeared that O'Shea was killed when KLA broke free and crashed. Very sad music only reinforces the reality of this tragic twist. However when an equally very sad Virgil and Brains return to Tracy Island they discover from Alan's flashbacks that the only part of O'Shea that died was a recording of his voice that was left playing on KLA! Alan saved both O'Shea and his assistant Loman after all!
• Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger: The final arc involves the team mentor Doggie Kruger seemingly perishing and giving a final speech for the Dekarangers to move on, combine their strengths, defeat Agent Abrellar, and retake the Deka Base. They eventually succeeded in doing so, deleting Abrellar, but their happy cheering came to halt after they realize that regardless, Doggie would still be in heaven...Cue "Who's in heaven?" from Doggie himself, having survived off-screen and hiding in the shadows to see how his rangers fared on their own (with full trust that they will succeed), and cue ALL Dekarangers hugging him in tears one by one, And the Adventure Continues. (They still got other criminals to apprehend!)
• The Untamed: While the original novel ended on a happy note for the Official Couple (who finally got together and spend the last few main chapters and extra chapters Happily Married), this adaptation drops many hints prior to the finale that the Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji are going to go their separate ways in the end. While that initially seems to be the case near the final five minutes of the episode, the very last scene implies otherwise; after playing the flute alone on a mountaintop, Wei Wuxian hears a very familiar voice call his name and smiles after turning around to see who it is. The Special Edition's alternate ending confirms this happier turn of events by showing that Wei Wuxian is now living in the Cloud Recesses.

Music

• In the original Peter and the Wolf the story ends by revealing that the duck that had been eaten was swallowed alive by the wolf, creating only the vague possibility that the duck would be recovered. However, it also allows for the possibility that the duck would simply die a slow death inside the wolf, which is the interpretation that "Weird Al" Yankovic gave to it. Because of this, many adaptations add the wolf vomiting the still-alive duck back up at the ending, and the Disney version in Make Mine Music has her only appear to be eaten but turn out to have just been hiding inside a hollow tree at the end.
• Some of J.S. Bach's minor-key works end with the chord of the parallel major (e.g. C major, for a piece in C minor). This is called a "Tierce de Picardie" and was an extremely common feature in music of the time period.
• Rolf Just Nilsen's "Julekveld i skogen" ("Christmas Eve in the Forest"), a parody of excessively sentimental Christmas songs, starts by spending four verses describing the miserable Christmas of a poor old couple. Then their eldest son, who hasn't even bothered to contact them in the last 24 years, suddenly shows up and showers them with Christmas presents. This is a downplayed example, however — the son appears out of nowhere, but as the narrator points out, "the main characters get a happy Christmas after all" is the expected ending of a Christmas Song that tells a story.
• The music video for Daft Punk's "Da Funk" follows the misfortunes of Charles, an inexplicably dog-headed humanoid wandering through the streets of New York with a ghettoblaster and a broken leg, getting bullied by kids and street vendors, with the sole glimmer of hope being his fortunate reunion with an old friend... which gets cut off by the ending as the two suddenly get separated again. Viewers reportedly felt so bad for Charles that the duo decided to make a sequel video in "Fresh", showing him having gotten an acting gig and having reunited with Beatrice, with the two happily driving off into the sunset together.
• The end of the music video for The Bloodhound Gang's "Why's Everybody Always Pickin' On Me?" makes it clearer than in the song with the freeze-frame epilogue:
  Jimmy's former classmates all suffered from hemorrhoids. Luckily for them, Jimmy went on to become a successful proctologist.

Theatre

• A surprising number of Greek tragedies have happy endings.^note Keep in mind this is partially because the word "tragedy" has a completely different meaning in Ancient Greek drama than it does in modern usage Some of the more notable examples include:
  • The Oresteia. Not that it isn't a pretty dark and grisly trilogy throughout, but the last entry, "The Eumenidies" ends on a remarkably good note. Orestes is rescued from the wrath of the Furies by Apollo and Athena, who acquit him in a jury trial and let him go free, pardoned of guilt. This also paves the way for Athena to establish Athens' legal system, which favors innocence over guilt, thus putting an end to the cycle of revenge and transforming the Furies into the Kindly Ones.
  • Philoctetes. Neoptolemus manages to work a compromise between Odysseus and Philoctetes, in a way that both saves the Greek army at Troy and repays the titular character for the wrong he's suffered at their hands. The play ends with them sailing off with Philoctetes on board, leaving the deserted island of Lemnos.
  • Oedipus at Colonus. It may not seem like a happy ending, what with the main character dying, but after years of being tossed around as the plaything of fate, Oedipus comes to grips with his destiny, gets to die on his own terms, and does it in a way that makes him a hero and blesses the only city willing to take him in: Athens. This doubles as a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming when you consider the historical context of the play. This is Sophocles' last play, produced posthumously, and considered by many to be his farewell to the Athenian stage.
  • Alcestis. Admetus receives his wife back from the dead, his friendship with Heracles is patched up, and a day of celebration is proclaimed throughout the kingdom. ^note  A number of scholars actually consider this to be an ambiguous ending, given that Alcestis' resurrection from the dead likely means Death will be back for Admetus in three days' time. Also note that technically, this play isn't a tragedy, though what exactly it is classified as is a riddle for the ages.
  • Iphigenia Among the Taurians. Yes, even Iphigenia gets a happy ending! In this version, she wasn't actually sacrificed to Artemis, but whisked away at the last moment and taken to Tauris, where she serves as the King's high priestess. There, she manages to reunite with her long lost brother Orestes, steal the temple idol from the Taurians, and escape the land scot-free with her last living relative, thanks to some last minute help from Athena.
• In The Abduction from the Seraglio, the heroes' plan has Gone Horribly Wrong in every conceivable way, they are preparing to be tortured and executed, and Belmonte and Konstanze sing a duet of being Together in Death. Then Pasha Selim changes his mind and lets everyone go, leading to a happy chorus in his honor.
• Parodied in The Beggar's Opera, when just as the Villain Protagonist is about to be hanged, it's announced that the audience demands a happy ending (even though, morally, they should be in favour of him being hanged), so he gets reprieved and marries Polly for a Dance Party Ending. The Threepenny Opera has him not only reprieved, but given lands and a title by the Queen.
• Similarly parodied in the 2001 Edinburgh Fringe show Opera Galactica, a bizarre operatic Star Wars spoof, which intially ends with all the characters dead (Duke [who is Luke and Han] kills Dark Invader while he explains Luke, I Am Your Father, Princess Slayer kills herself due to the Surprise Incest, and Invader kills Duke with his last breath). And then ... the Galactic President (a George W. Bush impression) appears on the screen, announces that this is not family entertainment, and the final scene is redone with Duke, Slayer and Invader becoming a happy family, and Guru (the Obi Wan character) turning out to not be dead either, and to have planned the whole thing to bring them together, as explained in a cheesy musical number called "I Lied to You All, But I Did It For Love". The 2019 Brisbane Opera version replaces the Galactic President with the director, who's just had a phone call from Disney ("Apparently, our opera has some similarities to a movie franchise..."), but it's the same idea.
• With the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice being a Foregone Conclusion and Bugs Bunny famously noting that operas don't tend to have happy endings, it comes as a surprise that in Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice opera, after Orpheus turns around and dooms Eurydice, Cupid brings her back to life in honor of their undying love.
• Opera's tendency to always end in death and/or floods of tears makes Vincenzo Bellini's opera 'I Puritani' exceedingly surprising. Just when it looks like Arturo is going to be executed and Elvira plunged back into a madness from which she will never return, an official arrives and announces that Arturo is pardoned. So, he and Elvira will be getting married after all, making this one of the few non-comedic operas with a happy ending.

Video Games

• Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow ends the classic Castlevania series not with Dracula destroyed, but with him reborn as a human and trying to overcome his past crimes, now aided by the heroes that previously tried to kill him.
• In Crysis 3, you've killed the Alpha Ceph, but the wormhole has already opened, the continent-sized Ceph battleship is coming through, and you have been flung into space. It looks like it's going for a downer ending, when Prophet gets a surge of willpower and leaps to the Archangel Satellite and blows the ship to hell.
• Days Gone has a shockingly happy ending for a game with such a dark post-apocalyptic setting compared to most other works set in that kind of world. Deacon finds out his wife Sarah isn't dead after all, kills the traitor Skizzo and destroys the Colonel's army and when it looks like the Colonel is about to finish off Deacon, he coughs and collapses dead(Sarah having poisoned his tea) also while the zombie outbreak is still a problem, Deacon has an ally in the form O'Brian, so overall the characters alive at the end are in a much better place then they were before.
• Dead to Rights: Retribution has a considerably more optimistic ending compared to the previous games in the franchise as Jack's love-interest actually survives and Grant City is less of a Crapsack World compared to the previous games(I.E. having an actually competent Mayor in Gloria Exner instead of Pinnacle)and Jack's name isn't tarnished so he overall comes out pretty good despite the death of his father.
• Dragon Age: Inquisition does this with a lot of its returning characters. Morrigan may have ran off at the end of Origins, but she's back and any character development from the first game has stuck- including her relationship with the Warden and her kid, if romanced or the Dark Ritual was done (and she's a genuinely decent parent). Cullen gets to do good for once and return home to his family, possibly with his wife. Varric becomes Viscount of Kirkwall and makes things better there for his former party-mates, and so on.
• Elden Ring: It's a given that you'll repair the Elden Ring (unless you're actively going for a villain playthrough), but if you follow Goldmask or Fia's quests, you can obtain a mending rune that will allow you to remake it even better; Goldmask's Mending Rune of Perfect Order will remove the flaw that allowed the Shattering to occur by making gods responsible to the Golden Order, and Fia's Mending Rune of the Death Prince will return the Rune of Death to its rightful place, ending persecution of Those Who Live In Death and possibly allowing the half-dead demigods to finally die properly. And if you follow Millicent's quest, you can make it even sweeter by sparing Melina from having to make a Heroic Sacrifice by cheating the Frenzied Flame. The game will make you work for it; you'll need to work out the method on very few hints and beat Malenia for it, but saving the one who's been with you from the beginning is so worth it.
• Fairune 2 has Layla learn her name and immediately gets thrust through the Gate, leaving Hope Girl and Ancient Codex behind. The two bemoan Layla's sudden departure and take solace in the fact that the Ashen World no longer threatens Fairune, and note how Sunset Cage was left on top of the Administrator's Tower. Then, the version of Layla they first met comes down the second floor ladder and excitedly remarks how Layla of the Ashen World brought her back, and how she sends her thanks. The three then go off to travel the worlds with the Fairies as guides.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy VI seems like it's well on its way some kind of tragic or heavily bittersweet ending after Kefka destroys the world, but whether it gets that way is entirely up to the actions of the player, as any party deaths, as well as the death of Cid, are entirely preventable, with the only hero who's unaccounted for being Banon, and once the party defeats Kefka the ending goes out of its way to show that the "World of Ruin" is on its way to recovery.
  • Final Fantasy VIII seems like it will end in tragedy for the main characters, as Squall appears to die and Rinoa finds his seemingly dead body, cradles him in her arms and grieves...and then apparently he's revived by The Power of Love, so the entire main cast get a happy ending. Even Seifer, Raijin, and Fujin appear happy with where they are now, even though they're likely never welcome back to Balamb Garden ever again.
  • Final Fantasy IX again teases the main character's death, since Zidane stays with his dying brother even as everything is crashing down on them, and then gives us a closing narration in the form of a goodbye letter from another of the main characters, Vivi, who is implied to have actually died. Queen Garnet is heartbroken over Zidane's uncertain fate but still must attend a performance by Tantalus, a Book Ends to the start of the game. But then one of the play's actors, kept in a cloak for most of the performance, reveals himself to be Zidane, resulting in one of the series' most heartwarming endings in which Garnet runs to embrace Zidane as the whole crowd (which included their friends, and clones of Vivi, his "offspring") cheers.
• Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective begins with protagonist Sissel's death, and he only has until dawn to find out who he is and who killed him before his ghost disappears forever. By the end he has not only uncovered the truth, but manages to travel back in time ten years to prevent a great tragedy that ruined the lives of most of the supporting characters. In this new timeline, all the dead characters are still alive, the wrongfully convicted characters were never imprisoned, and the events that traumatised some characters never occurred. The villain has a Heel–Face Turn and gladly accepts his punishment for his crimes in the original timeline, and everyone else is shown living happy, fulfilling lives.
• God of War Ragnarök gives Kratos one. After spending the entire first trilogy stuck in a vicious Cycle of Revenge, and the PS4 game accidentally starting Ragnarok, he's able to scrape up some character development, reconcile with Atreus, save most of the Nine Realms from the apocalypse, and avert a prophecy of his death by recognizing that fate is nothing more than the logical consequences of his actions and refusing to make the hasty decisions that cost him everything. He even finds a prophetic mural from his wife that hints that he will become known as a benevolent deity and beloved savior, a far cry from the monster he was in Greece.
• Guilty Gear -STRIVE-: Despite being the darkest game in the series and alluding to the death of Sol Badguy several times, Frederick Bulsara's story actually ends with his Sol Badguy persona dying, him saving the world from I-no, being depowered so he's no longer the Flame of Corruption, finally burying the hatchet with Asuka/That Man, and having his death faked by the US government so he can retire away to a little machine parts shop with Jack'O, the woman he loves. Also Axl Low, who spent untold years lost in time, learned he was no longer human and seemingly sacrificed any chance of going back to his own time for the greater good in the previous game, is finally reunited with his girlfriend Megumi courtesy of I-no using the last of her power to bring Megumi forward to the current timeline.
• At the end of Half-Life: Blue Shift, Barney purely and simply manages to escape Black Mesa. No strings attached like Gordon, or being captured like Shepard.
• The normal ending of Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2 looks like it would be a Bittersweet Ending thanks to the four CPU goddesses (Neptune, Vert, Blanc, Noire) who sacrificed themselves to destroy Arfoire. Only for the four of them to show up after Nepgear makes her speech about becoming the new goddess of Planeptune.
• In Iter Vehemens Ad Necem, going through the incredibly hard dungeon and finally retrieving the head of Elpuri, or going even further to get the Shirt of the Golden Eagle results in...Petrus upholding their promise and freeing/knighting you, respectively, and in the former case, that's still happier than you might think, as you still get to keep all the loot you acquired. The only ending that could be considered 'bad' is slaughtering the entirety of Attnam and becoming Mortifier's right-hand man, but even that is beneficial to the Player Character.
• Kingdom Hearts II is playing its last scenes following the Final Boss and it looks almost certain that the story will end with Sora and Riku separated from their friends and left stranded on a beach to waste away into darkness, at least content with reconciling their friendship and knowing that everyone and everything they love in the realm of light is safe from harm thanks to their actions. And then Kairi's message in a bottle, which she wrote and sent adrift way back in the games' Prolonged Prologue, finds its way to Sora and Riku. Immense happiness follows.
• With it being a prequel game set 100 years before The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, many fans were fully expecting Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity to have a downer ending where nearly all of Hyrule is destroyed, the King and the champions perish in battle, and Link is near fatally injured, requiring his 100 year long rest to properly save the kingdom. The game even starts with a scene showing the Calamity as it happens in Breath of the Wild's timeline, prepping players for the inevitable. However, the plot is subtly changed by the intervention of a time-travelling guardian built by Zelda to change the course of history, calling champions from the future to help their ancestors from the past. As a result, this creates a timeline where not only the Calamity is stopped before it lays waste to the kingdom, but the King and champions all manage to survive their fates and the villainous Yiga clan defect to the side of good. The only bittersweet aspects of the game's ending are the fact the future champions must return to their time (which is especially hard for Sidon, as his sister Mipha is one of the champions), and the guardian sacrificing itself to save the others, although even that can be changed by a post-game quest to rebuild it.
• Lufia:
  • In Lufia & The Fortress of Doom, it appears that the Hero has succeeded in saving the world from the Sinistrals, but has lost Lufia in the process. However, Lufia reappears during the ending, alive but suffering from Identity Amnesia.
  • Lufia: The Legend Returns has one as well. Before her death, Seena promises Wain that they'll meet again, and she gets revived because of such promise, since as her last bit of Sinistral Erim's omnipotent fortune telling power grants her her wish before it fades away.
• Luminous Avenger iX: Despite being Darker and Edgier than the previous titles of the Azure Striker Gunvolt Series (which themselves usually have a Bittersweet Ending at best), complete with The Reveal the game takes place in an Alternate Timeline where the Bad Ending of the first game goes through, the game actually does end on a genuinely optimistic note, with Blade and Kohaku managing to save Copen and Lola from dying after the Final Battle, and as the sequel indicates, the world has largely remained peaceful after Asimov's demise.
• Mass Effect 3: After a massive fan outcry centered around the original ending (which was felt to be too much of a Downer Ending regardless of the player's actions), BioWare released the "Extended Cut" DLC, which adds an epilogue sequence showing the fate of the galaxy in the aftermath of the Reaper War. If the player accumulated enough War Assets, it can be surprisingly hopeful; though casualties were heavy, the lion's share of humanity and the other Council species are still alive, galactic civilization is being rebuilt, and the alliances forged during the war usher in a new era of peace and mutual cooperation (possibly bolstered by Shepard, the Reapers, or the newfound connection between organics and synthetics, depending on outcome).
• My Friendly Neighborhood: the animatronic puppets try to hurt you, but they're not evil at all. After their show was cancelled due to low viewing figures, they watched what was on TV to find out what was actually popular, and now they're only being mean because they think people want them to be. Turns out that they're completely happy to go back to being friendly if they're given the opportunity to make their show again.
• Yoko Taro has a habit of writing oppressively bleak stories full of suffering and hardship where there's little hope of a happy ending for anyone. It seems like NieR: Automata, already a game full of characters suffering from the horrors of a many millennia-long war of attrition as well as their own personal existential crises, tumbling over the Despair Event Horizon in droves, is well on its way to a tragic ending as well, with the YoRHa project destroyed, the revelation that humans have been long extinct and the androids trying to liberate the Earth on their behalf have been fighting and dying for a lie, 2B dead, 9S driven to murderous insanity by grief and rage over 2B's death as well learning the Awful Truth about Project YoRHa and the meaninglessness of his own existence, and either A2 and 9S killing each other or A2 purging a logic virus from 9S' system to possibly ease his psyche and then pulling a Heroic Sacrifice to destroy the Tower. At best the end of the game seems to be depressingly bittersweet. And then comes Ending E, where Pod 042 Grows Beyond His Programming and tries to salvage A2, 9S and 2B's data to bring them back to life at the risk of killing himself, which is represented by a brutally difficult Bullet Hell True Final Boss battle against the end credits themselves. But instead of the tragically bleak feeling of the endgame the whole fight becomes more and more optimistic as the game sends the player encouraging messages from other players each time they die, and eventually even offers help from other player ships. If the player succeeds, then the trio are rebuilt and given a second chance at life. The whole thing comes off like the playerbase grabbing Yoko Taro by the collar and viciously shaking him until he agrees to write a happier ending.
• Every canon Resident Evil installment qualifies, with the best ending (if Multiple Endings exist, otherwise it's almost always a surprisingly happy ending by default) generally involve the good guys escaping and living for another day.
  • For example, this theme that plays in the credits for Resident Evil 3: Nemesis is the cherry on top. While Raccoon City being nuked is bittersweet, at least most of the good guys survived and the city was largely evacuated.
  • Resident Evil 5 sees the hero of the aforementioned game being Brainwashed and Crazy. Beyond all hope, she recovered.
  • Resident Evil 6 starts apocalyptically and ends with the whole outbreak contained as well as almost everybody good involved survives.
  • Taking all of the DLC into account, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard takes the cake due to the hopelessly bleak the situation was. Ethan gets Mia back home to safety in the main game. The Not a Hero DLC sees Chris Redfield finishing off Lucas and stopping the further spread of bioweapons by destroying the databases. The End of Zoe DLC sees Zoe cured of the mold infection, Joe survives his ordeal (with Zoe knowing it was him who saved her), and Jack finally gets put to rest after the hell he's gone through.
  • Somewhat averted in Resident Evil Village, as it's a standard Bittersweet Ending where Ethan realized that he's been Dead All Along at the beginning of the preceding game. However, his final act of sacrifice severs the literal root of all evil (as it's the thing that inspires the founder of Umbrella to start the whole mess up since the beginning), though the B.O.Ws worldwide are far from being fully contained, with a Sequel Hook very clearly set up.
• RuneScape's Myreque quest storyline's final quest River of Blood ends surprisingly happily after the Sudden Downer Ending of the previous quest The Lord of Vampyrium. In The Lord of Vampyrium the Myreque succeeds in assassinating Lord Drakan, although several members die, but at the end Vanescula betrays the Myreque and kills Safalan, and plans to use his blood to make vampyres and werewolves immune to the River Salve barrier so they can invade Misthalin, and Veliaf disbands the Myreque and reveals that Calsidiu doesn't exist. The only Ray of Hope is that a mysterious person held prisoner by Drakan is now free. In River of Blood the mysterious prisoner is revealed to be the former queen Efaritay and it is revealed that Safalan wasn't killed by Vanescula, but was turned into a wyrd. The player character manages to cure Safalan's hunger for blood and uses the same cure to make it so that any former human vampyre that tries to cross the River Salve barrier will turn back to human. After this, the werewolves declare themselves independent of their vampyre masters, thus preventing war between Morytania and Misthalin. Vanescula admits defeat and rules over Morytania with Safalan and Efaritay ^note and also Veliaf if you tell him about what happened after the quest as advisors, making Morytania a better place for both humans and vampyres, with the cure for blood lust the player character created making it so vampyres won't need to feed on humans as much anymore.
• The Splatterhouse games are heavy on both copious amounts of violence and gruesome enemies, with Rick having to contend with several unspeakable abominations of nature to keep his loved ones safe and no shortage of bittersweet endings should Rick fail to do so. Yet, the original trilogy canonically ends with Rick killing the Terror Mask, thus ensuring that it will never hurt anyone ever again, before finally settling down in peace with his wife and son.
• Super Mario Sunshine: FLUDD is destroyed, while everything else about the plot reaches its resolution. Then, in the final scene, the Toads present a repaired FLUDD.
• Tacoma. A space station suffering a terrible accident that threatens the entire crew, the ship's AI acting suspiciously, an Evil Corporation plotting in the shadows, a crew member becoming increasingly terrified, the desperate escape plan blowing up in their faces...and then Everybody Lives, gets away, and the benevolent AI is rescued at the end of the game.
• One of Undertale's neutral endings sees all the leaders dead, but no one else hurt. In the end, the Annoying Dog ascends to the throne and makes life better for everyone by just sleeping all day.
• The Walking Dead: The first three seasons all ended in various shades of Bitter Sweet Ending and the Final Season seemed to be heading the same way, with hints that Clementine would ultimately die to save AJ, just as Lee did for her. But despite losing her leg to a walker bite, Clementine survives. She and AJ finally find a safe place to call home and a majority of their friends (and Clementine's potential Love Interest) are still alive after the final battle with a group of raiders. It's as close to a Happy Ending as you can get in a Zombie Apocalypse.

Visual Novels

• Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, despite all the hardships the group goes through, and even during what seems to be a no-win situation, they manage to Take a Third Option and escape the Neo World Program with their memories and a drive to create their own futures intact. It's also heavily implied that their dead friends could all be revived from their comas as well. Not only that, said friends (with one exception) are ultimately revived as of Danganronpa 3. That's right, a near-Everybody Lives ending in Danganronpa of all things!
• After the tragically bittersweet ending of Doki Doki Literature Club! in which Monika realizes the error of her ways and restores the game to normal, but with what's left of her data removed, only for Sayori to gain self-awareness instead and start to turn into the next Monika before Monika gives up and destroys the entire game, the player may be surprised to learn of a secret, significantly less bittersweet ending unlocked by going through every girl's route and viewing every CG before Sayori's suicide (which requires starting the game multiple times.) Said ending still involves Sayori gaining self-awareness, but upon seeing how much the player went out of their way to spend time with everyone ends up thanking the player for caring about everyone so much, and the goodbye note from Monika is replaced with a thank you letter from the developer. The game is still rendered unplayable afterwards, but Sayori, Natsuki and Yuri still get to live on afterwards.
• Fate/stay night:
  • The Realta Nua PS2 port adds a "Last Episode" epilogue to the Fate Route's ending, where Saber returns to Camlann at the end of the Grail War. In that epilogue, Merlin explains that for Saber to be reunited with Shirou, two miracles must occur — Saber has to wait endlessly while Shirou has to pursue her endlessly. In the end, they both fulfill the miracles and reunite in Avalon.
    Shirou: "I'm back, Saber."
    Saber: "Yes. Welcome back, Shirou."
  • The Heaven's Feel route of the visual novel counts; while one of the endings is an absolute soul-crushing Tear Jerker in which Shirou dies performing a Heroic Sacrifice, the other ending, marked as the "True" ending, is the only no-caveats happy ending in the entire work, in which Everybody Lives who possibly can, and they all make it out happy.
• Higurashi: When They Cry is a Dysfunction Junction horror series where the murderous, gory insanity of nearly all its protagonists is integral to their Character Development, and to the viewer solving the central mystery and figuring out the plot. It is also a series devoted to showing the best aspects of human nature as well as the worst, and it is ultimately the story of how seven very damaged, surprisingly sympathetic people learn to trust and confide in one another, overcoming their flaws to build the safe, loving family that only a few of them had and all of them need. The finale's Aesop is not a new one for anime or video games — working together, friends can defy fate itself — but the realism and multiple angles from which it approaches that Aesop makes the story a surprisingly heartwarming, inspirational one. In particular, the Atonement arc had this going for it (in the anime, not the visual novel; the latter had a rather nasty plot twist). Rena did some terrible things, and tried to do even more, but that hug between her and Keiichi was so sweet it transcended shipping preferences.
• Steins;Gate seemingly ends with Okabe achieving a Pyrrhic Victory, saving his closest friend after an extensive Trauma Conga Line and at the cost of the woman he fell in love with. But then the series reminds the audience of the yet-to-be-explained weirdness of the first episode and that John Titor existed before the shift to the Alpha world line, and it turns out that Okabe has to save Kurisu to prevent World War III. He does so and ends up in the titular timeline- the perfect timeline where no one dies.
• The Zero Escape trilogy has this in every episode, although it becomes a bit more ambiguous in later episodes.
  • Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors: By playing the game you saved Akane's life in the past, and the only people in any real danger were the people who kidnapped and threatened her at that time.
  • Virtue's Last Reward: You discover the timeline in which everyone survives, and this equips you to travel back in time to prevent the Deadly Game being necessary at all.
  • Zero Time Dilemma: The whole thing is a plot to ensure Zero and the other players are equipped to prevent the world's destruction at the hands of nuclear terrorism.

Web Animation

• DEATH BATTLE!: In a series where two combatants have to fight to the death, "Scooby-Doo vs. Courage the Cowardly Dog" is an episode where two lovable dogs have to do so. The episode ends with neither dog dying and instead making amends with each other and the hosts considering it one of the very rare instances of a draw. The one casualty of the fight was Courage's abusive owner Eustace Bagge, which both dogs and host Boomstick rejoiced over.
• Invoked in Internet Historian's biography of Stede Bonnet, The Gentleman Pirate. He acknowledges that the real-life Stede was executed and didn't have a happy ending, but the biography decides to go with a more satisfying conclusion: Stede is able to stop his execution and kill his enemies with a machine gun. He then rides away on a speedboat with tons of gold, his children, and his magically-revived Quartermaster.
• Missing Cat is a video by Darkbox Horror, who specializes in horror works. Rather than some Cruel Twist Ending as usual, the video ends with the protagonist finding the missing daughter from the posters, beating down the kidnapper, and getting his reward money as the family happily reunites.
• Monster Lab (2021) is a rather bloody adult comedy - oh, and an original work by MeatCanyon for crying out loud - about a Mad Scientist and his paranoid neighbour. Yet surprisingly it isn't a complete horror fest, but rather has an ending where every major character (protagonist and antagonist) ends up a better person (yes, even the bloodthirsty demon in the basement comes out better).
• The last part of PONY.MOV, in sharp contrast with the usual endings from other animations done by Max Gilardi, and the cynical tone of the previous episodes, ends on a happy manner with Ponyville rebuilt, the Mane Six on good terms again, and Applejack even keeps her character development from Ask Jappleack.
• RWBY:
  • After the Downer Ending of Volume 3 which saw the deaths of Pyrrha and Penny, the destruction of Beacon Academy, Ozpin going missing, and all of the heroines sans Ruby all varying degrees of battered and demoralised, Volume 4 ends with Weiss escaping from Atlas and her controlling abusive father to join Cool Big Sis Winter, Blake undergoing much-needed Character Development and vowing to take back control of the White Fang, and perhaps most optimistically, Yang regaining her fighting spirit (as well as a replacement for her right arm) and travelling to Mistral to join Ruby. The only thing that's sad about the ending is that Weiss had to leave Atlas with her claim to the Schnee Dust Company ripped away from her and that Haven's already infiltrated with Salem's minions, with the headmaster being The Mole.
  • Volume 9 was a massive Trauma Conga Line for Ruby and Jaune, the former passing the Despair Event Horizon and the later suffering from Sanity Slippage during his time in the Ever After, resulting in a season where the two suffer from endless depression and self-doubt after 8 previous seasons putting up with The Chains of Commanding. The volume ends with Ruby regaining her confidence and self-worth, Jaune finally putting to rest his trauma regarding Pyrrha and Penny's deaths while regaining his youthful age, the Curious Cat defeated before they could cause any more wreckage and Neo personally choosing to accept Roman's death and undergo Ascension to find herself. To cap it all off, Ruby's S.O.S. message sent out in Volume 8 was heard by all of Remnant, and the last shot has RWBY and Jaune re-appear in Vacuo to see the entire international battalion ready to counter Salem's next move, meaning her Divide and Conquer plan ends up being for naught.

Webcomics

• Platypus Comix has pulled this a few times:
  • In True Believers, Joe Quesadilla's attempts to break up the Happily Married Spider-Man and Mary Jane Watson climax with MJ undergoing a Disney Villain Death. When he goes down to collect MJ's body, though, she springs back to life, pulls out a Retcon stamp that she stole from Quesadilla earlier, and uses it to Retgone Quesadilla. Once she reunites with Spidey, she explains that she managed to return because Death Is Cheap in the Marvel Universe. Additionally, the disappearance of Joe Quesadilla and his Executive Meddling cause the comic industry to flourish.
  • Electric Wonderland has a story in which a cyberspace superhero known as the Nettropolis Narvel finds his life to be a mere simulation. In the "real" cyberspace, he falls in love with a selfish young woman, Vicky, who he mistakes for his crimefighting partner, Girl Friday. Unfortunately, Vicky deems herself too sinful for an incorruptible boyfriend like Narvel, and sends him to get treated for his delusions of superheroism. Narvel continues to insist to remorseful Vicky that she is Girl Friday, and gives her a kiss. They suddenly both find themselves back in the lives they led as superheroes, revealing that the world in which Narvel and Friday had no superpowers was nothing more than a simulation created by their enemy.
• Ruby Quest is a Cosmic Horror Story with a happy ending. It's even more surprising because it wasn't supposed to be this way; the players kept doing the unexpected, resulting in Ruby and Tom escaping the facility together along with fellow survivor Jay, sharing a bottle of champagne as they ride off into the sunset. (Or in Jay's case, sleeping on the front of the tram, because he's been through some stuff... that's a good way to put it.)
• Tales of the Unusual is known for its multitude of downer endings. However, a few stories end surprisingly well considering their genre:
  • "The Future Spirit" is about a man who can see how people are going to die (including himself) but usually leaves them to their fate lest he be blamed when they inevitably die another way. He falls in love with a woman he saved, but he is worried that she wouldn't take it well if he told her about the future spirits. They have several close calls with death, culminating in an earthquake with a large death toll. The man gives up his protective charm to save the woman and worries that she died anyway, but it turns out she is alive and understands his situation. They become Happily Married and find stable jobs.
  • "Ghost Home Care" is about a man who hires a ghost cleaning service because his apartment is a mess and he's too exhausted to clean it after working at his new job. After a month, he finds the ghosts' help awkward and cancels the service. Unlike other stories of that nature, there are no repercussions to canceling and the man realizes he can handle the housekeeping himself.

Web Original

• Season 2 of the Dream SMP was just one long Trauma Conga Line for Tommy, to the point where, when Dream sent him and Tubbo an ultimatum to meet him somewhere far away to fight for the discs one last time, the most optimistic predictions still involved Tommy and Tubbo losing the fight and ending up in prison. However, a few days before the fight, Tommy quietly sent Punz a massive bribe, leading to Punz secretly rallying about half the server to come in and save Tommy and Tubbo from Dream. Dream was subsequently stripped of his power, locked in prison, and the season ended with Tommy and Tubbo sitting on their bench, listening to the discs, as Wilbur briefly returns as a ghost to tell Tommy just how proud he is of what they've pulled off. However, this gets somewhat undercut by Dream and Punz later confirming that this "victory" had been staged all along, to much contention from some parts of the fandom. That being said, it's fair to say that the results of this "staged victory" were much, much worse than Dream anticipated.
• Despite its nightmarish imagery, the NES Godzilla Creepypasta ends on a relatively upbeat note: Zach may be traumatized and the haunted cartridge is still out there, but Red is slain, the benevolent monsters are revived, and Melissa is free to pass on.
• If you want to believe this tale, the SCP Foundation actually gets this in the end, and boy if it isn't well deserved. After the Scarlet King is defeated by the armies of the Brothers Three, one of their soldiers comes to a pond in a forest, where she takes of her armor and washes off the blood, before she walks home.
  The end of the world went like this: Everyone lived happily ever after.
• Worm is very dark, and it's a very rough ride for the characters, especially the protagonist. But in the end, the world is saved and Taylor survives with a chance to start her life over. A lot of people still died, and it's still definitely a Crapsack World, but considering the From Bad to Worse nature of the series, the world not literally ending is pretty positive result.

Western Animation

• Castlevania (2017) is not the kind of story you'd expect to have a happy ending, yet the season 4 finale firmly established that all the heroes and even some of the villains got their happily ever after.
  • The entire 4th season had been full of death flags for Trevor. His girlfriend was pregnant, he admitted that there was no place for killers like him in a happy world, even the poster showed him somberly looking at the audience as the family crest on his tunic dissolved. When he goes up against Death, both him, the other characters and the audience expect it to be his last dance. However, as Trevor strikes at Death with a dagger that will surely kill him in the backlash, Saint Germain opens the Infinite Corridoor, sending Trevor safely a few miles away from the explosion. He arrives back at the Dracula castle a few days later, a bit worse for wear but still alive, ready to live in the world Sypha and Alucard are building.
  • Isaac spent all of season 3 growing a deep hatred for humanity, though gaining some appreciation for it as well. In season 4, he admits that killing the evil magician felt good, like he was ridding the world of some evil. After Carmilla kills herself in their battle, he decides to take the Captain's advice and build something better in Styria.
  • Hector manages to outwit the vampires that enslaved him and, surprising even himself, is spared by Isaac, who encourages him to do what he wants, not be a slave to someone else. Hector decides to settle down in peace.
  • Striga and Morana realize that following Carmilla's plan would ultimately result in a Pyrrhic Victory. When Carmilla dies, they decide to run off together.
  • Most surprising of all, Dracula. As a side-effect of Saint Germain and Trevor screwing up Death's plan, he and his Morality Chain wife Lisa are resurrected safely. No longer motivated to kill all of humanity, they decide to move to Whitby, England.
• It seemed like the Grand Finale of Codename: Kids Next Door was going to end the series on a bittersweet note at best. Numbuh One apparently had to leave the Earth and his friends behind forever, and now it looked like he and kids in general in the universe at large might be in more trouble than before, due to the information Father had gained from the interview. Until the final scene, that is, when a call revealed that the adult members of Sector V had been playing Father for a sap all along, and Numbuh One was finally coming back home.
• Another seemingly bittersweet example is Gravity Falls, when Stan Pines sacrificed himself by having his mind erased in order to destroy Bill Cipher. Mabel, desperate to restore his memories, showed him a scrapbook she worked on throughout the summer, and it gradually manages to work.
• The final moments of Moral Orel are surprisingly uplifting, especially taking into consideration the bitter conclusion of the first and second season, and the more cynical tone of the third season, with the last minutes of the series showing the main character having a happy, loving family as an adult.
• The Owl House, while it was expected to end in at least a Bittersweet Ending, the finale actually had a happy ending where the Big Bad is defeated, everyone continues their life rebuilding the Boiling Isles society and Luz Noceda gets to happily visit the Demon Realm every time she wants.
• The series finale of Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated. After Scooby destroys the Evil Entity (whom has just torn Crystal Cove to pieces and threatened to do so to the rest of the world), the results of doing so wind up re-writing and undoing all of the series pre-history, transforming their home into a perfect utopia of peace and happiness. Initially, the gang is down on their luck because in doing so, there are no more mysteries to solve. Until the new timeline's version of their taskmaster Mr. E (Season 1 special guest Harlan Ellison, who remembers all timeline alterations) offers them admission to his school, which specializes in solving mysteries.
• Happens in-universe in The Simpsons episode "Natural Born Kissers". Bart and Lisa discover the movie reel for an alternate ending to Casablanca: Sam saves Rick from getting shot by Louis before Adolf Hitler pops out of Sam's piano and is about to throw a grenade at them when Ilsa parachutes back, landing on the piano, killing Hitler inside, and Sam and Ilsa marry afterwards, with the movie ending with a "The End?" title card.
• In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode “Party Pooper Pants”, SpongeBob throws a house party that he tries to assert tyrannical authority over, due to reading a guide to throwing parties that said unsupervised parties lead to disaster. He takes this literally and rips into his guests whenever they deviate from his impractical schedule and forces them to participate in his ideas of fun (which are all really lame). It’s not until he gets locked outside his house that the guests finally have a good time doing what they want, and SpongeBob, watching from outside, thinks the party is going disastrously, oblivious to how much they’re enjoying themselves. He doesn’t get back into his house until the following morning, by which time he assumes the party was a disaster without his supervision. However, Patrick arrives to thank him for the party, declaring he’s the best party-planner ever. SpongeBob finally finds peace knowing everyone enjoyed the party, and is implied to realize it went great without his boring schedule, giving the episode a happy ending.
• A Thousand and One... Americas: In nearly all episodes, Chris' dreams with pre-Columbian civilizations end badly, either because he's unable to escape the criminal, wild animal or natural danger he's facing, or because he's witnessing a horrific event and he feels unable to do something about it; and when it seems like doom will befall him, Chris wakes up from the dream. However, there are episodes whose oneiric stories end well:
  • The story that develops in the two-part story about the Mayans (episodes 6 and 7) actually concludes with a happy ending, as all the conflicts he faces along the way (a kid being trapped by a snake, Chris falling onto a deep well, and the theft of the Pakal mask) are resolved successfully, and in the end Chris celebrates by showing the local Mayans how basketball (a sport they're unfamiliar with) is played. The thing that makes him wake up is a ball thrown at him by his brother.
  • In the fourteenth episode, Chris, Lon and some Anasazi warriors take a young hunter who was defeated in a fight against three thieves to a shaman so they can heal him. It seems like the man won't wake up because a long time passes with him unconscious, but he finally recovers. It is then explained to Chris that those thieves come from a rival tribe that never learned to harvest food, so they have to resort to stealing supplies from the thriving Anasazi in order to survive. A joke that makes everybody laugh later, and Chris simply wakes up.
  • The fifteenth episode appears to prepare a violent fight between two groups of Native Americans for the climax, as they were disputing the flesh of hunted bisons; however, the conflict ends with an agreement of sharing the preys so everybody can eat, they even smoke the Peace Pipe. What makes Chris wake up is the smell of his mom's cream pie (which, prior to waking up, he mistook for the peace pipe's smoke).
  • The twentieth episode appears to aim at a victory for the evil businessman who wishes to kidnap Chris and Lon for the sake of trafficking, and frame Undapawa for an act of trading fraud. He would have succeeded... if his evil actions hadn't been seen from the distance by his superior, who promptly fires him from the trading business and exiles him from the tribe. The adventure ends with a celebratory chant to the gods to plead for new resources and goodies, and Chris peacefully wakes up shortly afterwards.
  • The twenty-fourth episode is notable because, aside from the Chris and Lon having to confront some coyotes in the desert during the halfway act, it didn't even have an overarching conflict or unexpected bad situation to speak of. Even the scene that would have remotely caused one near the end (a Nazca guardian barring Chris and Lon from entering a sacred pyramidal temple in Cahuachi) is resolved near-instantly. And what makes Chris wake up is mistaking a flight simulation on Lon's part in the dream for the sound of a helicopter that is flying by in the real world.
  • Subverted with the twenty-fifth episode. Chris wakes up shortly after being told that he must not touch the serpent head statues near the entrance of the temple built in honor to Quetzalcoatl, which means he spares himself the potential danger that would ensue if he did so. But shortly afterwards, we see Lon having a bad dream (which the episode reveals it's related to the giant Feathered Serpent defeated by Ce Acatl), so it's likely either he or Chris did foolishly touch the statue(s) in said dream and made the monster appear once again. Chris' brother Fito prepares a cruel prank by putting a snake-shaped sock on the dog's tail, which gives him a good scare because it makes him believe the giant serpent is attacking him in the real world. Fito is scolded by Chris because of this.
• In the Wander over Yonder episode "The Nice Guy," Wander goes through hell trying to buy one bottle of Thunder Blazz for Sylvia. When he's about to buy the last bottle, he sees a little girl crying over there being none left. Wander then pays for the drink, but gives it to the little girl. It looks like this episode is going to have a Bittersweet Ending as Wander goes to Sylvia and is about to give her the bad news that he couldn't get her the drink she wanted, only for the little girl to come up and give the drink to Sylvia, whom she planned on giving it to all along because she saw how thirsty she was. She even says Wander's line, "Never hurts to help."

Real Life

• Although not a work, the end of the Cold War qualifies. Even as late as 1986, everyone believed the only way the ideological struggle between the USSR/Warsaw Pact and United States/NATO was going to end was with a nuclear war, as both blocs finally threw all their nuclear missiles at their opponent as World War III erupted. Nobody suspected that 1987 would see the beginnings of a renewed detente between the two nations, rapprochement between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev and a major arms-limitation agreement. Much less did anyone foresee the Hole in Flag revolutions that swept through the Warsaw Pact nations in 1989, including the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and the peaceful reunification of East and West Germany. And the events of 1991, culminating in the Christmas Day dissolution of the Soviet Union, and Gorbachev peacefully handing over his power to Boris Yeltsin of the Russian Federation, would have been a complete surprise to people in 1986.

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