All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.
Movies/series with their own pages:
Individual examples:
- Citizen Kane: The meaning of Charles Foster Kane's last words, "Rosebud." Although near the very end it is deemed by one character an enigma, a final Wham Shot reveals It Was His Sled.
- Hook: Hook casually impaling Rufio on his sword is a brutally shocking moment, especially since there's no cheap get-out and Rufio promptly dies. The film hadn't been going out of its way to avoid death up to this point (the pirate casually getting shot during the baseball game, for example), but until now viewers would have assumed that the Lost Boys at least had Plot Armor just in order to avert the Death of a Child. Nope! Although no other Boys die before it's over, Rufio's brutal death really does raise the stakes quite a lot.
- Inglourious Basterds premise is a World War II commando team doing horrible things to Nazis and being presented with the opportunity to kill Adolf Hitler. Naturally, the audience expects them to fail but at least it'll be entertaining to watch them try, leading to a gloriously cathartic moment on seeing Hitler's bullet-riddled corpse being shot again and again. Only a few of the Basterds make it out alive, but it was worth it.
- The King's Man: Many people were left speechless by Conrad's death in the second act, both in concept and execution. They thought that Conrad would follow in his father's pacifist footsteps after witnessing the horrors of war. Instead, he's abruptly shot by a fellow British soldier who mistook him for a German spy. It also serves as a dark(er) mirror of Harry's death in the first film, with the learner/son in the film's central mentoring relationship being the one to die instead of the mentor/father figure.
- The Mist: For those moviegoers familiar with the source material, the film's ending is like being hit by a sledgehammer. In the novella, David can't reach his house, so neither he nor the readers ever find out what happened to his wife. The four survivors in the car face an uncertain future and the mist shows no signs of dissipating. Filmgoers probably expected an ending like the novella's, leaving plenty of room for a possible sequel. In the film, however, David's wife is shown to be dead, webbed up by the spiderlike things. The car runs out of gas, leaving the survivors stranded and, as far as they know, with no options. David shoots the survivors (including his son) but runs out of bullets, so he gets out of the car to let the monsters finish him off. We hear a rumble...and a military vehicle roars out of the mist, which dissipates, showing us soldiers, rescue vehicles and monsters being killed with flamethrowers. David lets out a futile scream of anguish. Quite possibly the most shocking film ending in history to those who'd read the original work.
- No Time to Die:
- Felix Leiter's death, both for how sudden it is and because Leiter wasn't killed off in the novels or any previous film. Not even Licence to Kill, where he almost died with his leg fed to a shark.
- A big one at the end of the film: for the first time in any James Bond film, James Bond dies.
- Once Upon a Time in Hollywood spends a lot of its buildup presenting Sharon Tate as Too Good for This Sinful Earth and the Charles Manson family as evil creeps. You'd think that this would end up with Tate being killed off as a Foregone Conclusion, as the real Sharon was. Then at the last second, the murderers sent to kill Sharon choose to go after Rick Dalton instead, and get their asses handed to them in increasingly Bloody Hilarious ways.
- Rise of the Planet of the Apes: After being abused and mistreated for most of the film, Caesar the chimpanzee finally fights back against his abusive human caretaker. Then right after a Mythology Gag to the 1968 film, he stuns human and ape into silence when he speaks.Dodge: Take your stinking paw off me, you damn dirty ape!
Caesar: ...NO!!! - Run
- Diane looking for Household Neurotoxins on Google, implying that she is not as well-intentioned as she seems.
- Chloe learning that her mother was feeding her a dog medicine.
- Chloe force feeding Ridocaine to her bed ridden kidnapper at the end of the film
- Scream:
- Casey getting gutted in the first 5 minutes of the film, with her corpse left hanging on a tree.
- Tatum getting crushed by the garage door mechanism
- In the sequel, Randy getting pulled into a van and getting stabbed to death
- The Sixth Sense:
- "I See Dead People."
- The Reveal that Malcolm is Dead All Along.
- Us:
- Adelaide's encounter with her "reflection", especially as said reflection doesn't turn around when she does.
- The Tyler family being ambushed and killed by their Tethered counterparts.
- Adelaide strangling Red is incredibly brutal, especially because it felt out of character (she did at least try to comfort Umbrae and Pluto before they died).
- The reveal that the Adelaide we were following throughout the movie is a tethered, who swapped positions with Red after kidnapping and restraining her.
- Terminator: Dark Fate: A T-800 shows up from out of nowhere and guns down child John Connor. Within the first ten minutes of the film.
