Film
"I'm glad everybody's all right, but... that was weak."
—Mick, Idle Hands
Reverend Zombie: I had a tour group, out in the swamp, last Halloween. It was the mist of night, and there was this kid, who looked kind of like you, he was spooked by something in the marsh. He saw two eyes staring at him from the woods, it chilled him to his very marrow. He wanted to get off the boat in a hurry, and he had his foot dangling over the edge. He...
Ben: He fell in?
Marcus: A gator got him?
Zombie: He slipped, hit his head, on the roof... and sued me for negligence! That cocksucker!
Ben: That's it?
Ben: He fell in?
Marcus: A gator got him?
Zombie: He slipped, hit his head, on the roof... and sued me for negligence! That cocksucker!
Ben: That's it?
"These days, it's all about the gimmick. Great set up...Great first act...then, 'let's blow something up!' When you concentrate on the gimmick and you shortchange the ending, the audience leaves unfulfilled."
—Critical Jim, Who is Cletis Tout?
Literature
Would you like to hear
Of the terrible night
When I bravely fought the—
No?
All right.
Of the terrible night
When I bravely fought the—
No?
All right.
— "The Battle" (in its entirety), Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein
Newspapers
To call it an anticlimax would be an insult not only to climaxes but to prefixes.
Web Animation
"So that's it. He just gives him a paper and walks away? No fight scene, no car chase, no gun battle, no jump kicks? Lame."
— Jax Jonez Red vs. Blue ("Nightmare on Planet Evil")
"It certainly has a better ending than Bioshock, which isn't saying a whole lot. A situation wherein a man with a gun is ordering you to dig a shallow grave in the woods would probably end better than BioShock 1 did."
Web Original
"Well, that's slightly underwhelming. And... now it's just... really sad."
Whoever responsible was clearly taking a page out of Charlie 'I’ve already got your money, dude' Sheen’s playbook, except at least the unhinged actor didn’t beg his disgruntled audience to see his next one-man show that he promised would totally be worth it, honest!
And who can forget the ending? Me, that’s who.
— Darren Mooney
on Octopussy
on OctopussyImagine a car that hums along well enough despite hitting some potholes but suddenly bursts into flames, trapping and suffocating some valuables within.
— Brett Gallman on Fantastic Four (2015)
Fantastic Four (2015)Legend's final showdown is a worse catalog of disaster than Skymall For Supervillains. Chun-Li defeats her mortal enemy by accident, knocking cement powder from an utterly unexplained building site in the heart of Bison's fortress into his eyes. He staggers around like a crippled Make-a-Wish kid whose final desire was to be a guest villain in Home Alone, waiting a full five minutes until Chun-Li believes in herself hard enough to throw a fireball, despite having absolutely no reason to do that instead of just walking over and kicking him.
"'There can be only one' was just a saying without meaning. The Source could only be accessed by the pure of heart, and its only reward was to give the 'winner' a fucking baby. All the suffering, the angst, the lost loves of the series meant nothing. Connor MacLeod fought the Kurgan for nothing, because the Kurgan could never have entered the Source because he wasn’t pure of heart. Duncan and Methos teaming up to stop the Four Horsemen meant nothing, because the world still fell into chaos and Kronos could never have accessed the Source. Darius dying meant nothing because the thing James Horton feared – that immortals would one day rule mankind – could never have come to pass because the Source offered no power and no wisdom; it offered nothing beyond the chance to have a fucking baby.
Mary Jane, once to be praised for being long-suffering and basically always putting up with her husband, suddenly seems like she should’ve gone out for cigarettes and never came back years ago, if this is how their relationship was going to end up.
— David Brothers on One More Day, "The 15 Worst Comics of the Decade"
The game's ending, though, comes as suddenly as a stick of dynamite in one's breakfast cereal: unexpected, pointless, and ultimately damaging to the experience.
They're splicing in old soundtracks and clips in such a way to make new footage. This is the bottoming out of the series. All the budgets are GONE, and we're left with this attempt at an ending. In short, it's becoming another clip episode...It's rumored that the writer/director, Hideaki Anno, got death threats over this ending. I can see why.
Oh, and in the off chance you do bother watching every episode in this scintillating plot arc, don't expect anything like a satisfying conclusion. Actually, that applies to just about any episode of this show. If you're watching Voyager expecting a satisfying conclusion to anything, you're going to be one emotionally desolate person by the time it's all over. Absolutely nothing was concluded satisfactorily on Voyager, including the whole damn series itself.
— The Agony Booth on Star Trek: Voyager, "Threshold"
The Master has finally defeated the Doctor…by plugging in a few wires hehehehehe. That would have been a crap defeat.
The steady decline of the show was served well by the ending but only in the poetic justice sort of way that karma caught up with it.
— Don Houston on Andromeda
on AndromedaChris: I thought I was exaggerating when I said it was “less than five (seconds),” but I went and looked at the timestamps. Clark power-walks onto the same stupid street set they always use at 26:11, and they crash into the geothermal facility and blow it up at 27:50.
David: I just tried to think of something funny to respond to that with for four minutes. Note: That’s longer than the fight itself took.
David: I just tried to think of something funny to respond to that with for four minutes. Note: That’s longer than the fight itself took.
— Chris Sims and David Uzumeri on Smallville ("Doomsday")
Smallville ("Doomsday")Web Video
"You've dashed my hopes yet again."
— The Nostalgia Critic on 3 Ninjas.
"This is a problem that Doom avoided simply by having no story at all. BRILLIANT! Y'know, maybe this should be, like, a rule or something: Don't make a story driven game if your story isn't very good. Rage doesn't just end when those credits roll; it dies."
—George Weidman on Rage (2011)
Rage (2011)"I kinda thought it would all come together in some sort of sappy Jesus-loving ending, but it turns out it just didn't come together at all."
— Retsupurae on Escape
"To imply that this is anything worthy of being called an "Endgame" is like implying a grand game of Chess exists between a stoner who wants a Cinnabon, and the mall cop who shoo'ed him away for peeing in the trash bin next to Sbarro's."
— SFDebris on Star Trek: Voyager, "Endgame"
Pip: Alright, men, you know how the plan goes. If it moves, it dies; if it dies, you move on. Keep the grenades coming, keep the bullets raining, and most importantly... have fun. I'm gonna have a smoke.
Willingham: Excuse me, sir, but you're being awfully casual about all this. I mean, as casual as usual. But aren't we dealing with Bram Stoker meets Castle Wolfenstein shit here?
Pip: Honestly, Willingham, we were prepared for a full-on tactical assault. Instead, we got a volley of swastika-covered dipshits running dick-first into enemy territory.
Willingham: Still kinda crazy, though, isn't it?
Pip: Oh, oui! If you told me two years ago, when we were either starting or ending a war in the Middle East, that we'd end up fighting Nazi vampires, I'd have kissed you full on the mouth! But now... all I feel is robbed.
Willingham: Excuse me, sir, but you're being awfully casual about all this. I mean, as casual as usual. But aren't we dealing with Bram Stoker meets Castle Wolfenstein shit here?
Pip: Honestly, Willingham, we were prepared for a full-on tactical assault. Instead, we got a volley of swastika-covered dipshits running dick-first into enemy territory.
Willingham: Still kinda crazy, though, isn't it?
Pip: Oh, oui! If you told me two years ago, when we were either starting or ending a war in the Middle East, that we'd end up fighting Nazi vampires, I'd have kissed you full on the mouth! But now... all I feel is robbed.
—Hellsing Ultimate Abridged Episode 6
Video Games
"And then we found it! After working our butts off in this adventure, after collecting every stinking Power Cell in this entire crazy world, clawing my paws to the bone, we got...that's right; drum roll please...ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! ZIPPO! NADDA! Hello? That sucked! That suuuuuucked! I'll send you my therapy bill, and a receipt for the broken game controller!"
—Daxter, recounting the first Jak and Daxter's ending.
Webcomics
Black Mage: What?! That's it, I've had enough. This whole goddamn adventure has been nothing but pointless build ups towards pay offs that never happen. I'm done. It's been real. Smell ya later.
[Sarda rewrites Black Mage's last few sentences]
Black Mage: What happened is both satisfactory and logical. Goddammit.
[Sarda rewrites Black Mage's last few sentences]
Black Mage: What happened is both satisfactory and logical. Goddammit.
If all the main villains just disintegrated themselves walking across a line in the floor, I don't want to hear about narrative structure from you ever again!
Elan! This arc isn't over yet! Where's the growth? You didn't lose anything! Nothing has changed! YOU GET BACK HERE AND GIVE THIS PLOTLINE A SATISFYING CONCLUSION RIGHT THIS INSTANT!! ELAN! ELAN, THERE'S NO SENSE OF CLOSURE! I DON'T KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT! THIS IS A TERRIBLE ENDING!!!
—Tarquin, The Order of the Stick
Real Life
Nothing keeps a story alive more than an ending no one likes. When a big story ends with a thud, people will always wonder how it could have been done better. What happened with this Clone Saga is a prime example of how not to do a story, or a Spider-Man story.
— Editor/Writer Glenn Greenberg on The Clone Saga
