Audience-Alienating Ending is supposed to be an ending that scares off new potential fans from consuming a work. However, the misuse that got it renamed from Ending Aversion- an ending widely disliked by fans but that doesn't necessarily turn off new fans- is still present in most examples. Now, normally I would advocate for a rename or making the true definition clear, but in this particular instance, I feel that a case could be made for expanding the criteria to allow the misuse. Often, it is hard to say if anyone is scared off by an ending, because potential fans who experience that may well not voice their concerns on forums or otherwise and simply not follow the work at all. In addition, "otherwise-beloved work has ending that receives widespread backlash" is plenty tropeworthy on its own, because it demonstrates a (perceived or not) disconnect between most of the work and how it ends. This is especially the case when certain examples result in the author altering the ending or an Adaptational Alternate Ending, as has happened before.

I actually spoke with Ferot about this, and we both agreed on mixing the requirement for the ending to overshadow everything else, making it no longer a subtrope of Overshadowed by Controversy but instead a semi-inversion of Slow-Paced Beginning, and possibly rename it to Ending Letdown.

MOD EDIT: Wick check here.

1. YMMV.After School Nightmare: The story alienated multiple fan factions with its ending to a degree that they no longer recommend it, for completely different reasons:
   • The people who were reading for the mystery arc, who thought that the final explanation (the story is a metaphor for pregnancy and childbirth) was simply too silly and bizarre.
   • The shippers, who were unhappy that Mashiro and Sou end up in the real world but with no knowledge of each other or memory of their love.
   • The people who were reading for the exploration of ambiguous gender, who thought that the revelation that Mashiro's gender ambiguity being because they are actually fraternal twin fetuses struggling for possession of one life, meant that the situation was either reactionary in implication or too fantastic to have any possible real-world relevance.
2. YMMV.Banana Fish: Banana Fish has one heck of a Downer Ending, and some people have been known to avoid or quit the series halfway through once they hear what happens, since it's commonly seen to be completely divorced from everything else that happened in the story prior.
3. BrokenBase.Anime And Manga: To Puella Magi Madoka Magica fans, the sequel movie known as Rebellion is extremely contentious—mainly due to the part where Homura usurps Madoka and becomes a demon, creating a better world for everyone (except Madoka... probably), but in a morally questionable and manipulative way. Some people consider this ending a complete trainwreck, and will usually claim it was so out-of-character that the entire movie (or just the final-act twist) didn't really happen. But some people love it, because of some combination of the coolness/tragicness, the fact that they saw the big twist coming, or the sheer wild complexity of the whole thing. There isn't much middle ground. The related question of whether Homura's decision to take over the universe was good or evil can generate heated arguments at a moment's notice, which generally go nowhere because viewers' opinions on this question are absolutely unshakeable. There's also a third "Audience-Alienating Ending" faction who flat out refuses to watch the movie out of disgust towards the ending (having seen the spoilers).
4. YMMV.Bunny Drop: The manga's ending is rather infamous among anime and manga fans, mostly due to becoming a Wife Husbandry story at the last minute. Contrary to popular belief, the ending wasn't more accepted in Japan due to Values Dissonance; plenty of Japanese fans hated it, too. Consequently, neither the TV anime adaptation nor the live-action movie adaptation cover anything after the manga's Time Skip. It's to a point that the term "Usagi Dropped" was born to refer and warn people in case another series ended the same way as Bunny Drop did.
5. YMMV.Cage Of Eden: The manga was extremely popular during its run until its abrupt Left Hanging ending, and it was likened to Lost in both a literal sense and in unfavorable terms, at which point some were advised to not even bother starting and getting attached to the series.
6. YMMV.DC Animated Movie Universe: With the final film being relentlessly bleak and ending with a timeline reboot that renders the entire series meaningless, fans have found it difficult to commit to the series or recommend it to others.
7. YMMV.The Devil Inside: The movie abruptly ends with a car crash with the plot completely unresolved, and directs viewers to a (now defunct) website to finish the story. If it's not considered the worst movie ending of all time, it's certainly in the top 5. While the film certainly had other criticisms from critics and audiences, this ending was the breaking point that caused people to despise it and encourage others not to waste their time.
8. YMMV.Dying Light: The endings in The Following result in either Crane being turned into a volatile and spreading the infection outside of quarantine, or willingly activating a nuclear warhead to contain the infection by destroying all of Harran and its inhabitants. Suffice to say, the endings hurt many potential players' desire to play the DLC, or even the original game, for that matter.
9. YMMV.Far Cry 5: Several players and news outlets such as Polygon expressed this upon reaching the endgame, as none of the multiple endings provide a satisfactory conclusion or bring Joseph Seed to justice. As result, many who have played the game told those who hadn't to not bother with it at all, resulting in a noticeable sales drop from its very popular predecessor.
10. YMMV.House Of Cards US: To say the least, the inconclusive ending to the show's finale didn't satisfy fans — the finale currently has rating of just 2.5 out of 10 on IMDb, a far lower rating even than those of much more notorious series finales including those of Game of Thrones, Dexter, Star Trek: Enterprise, and How I Met Your Mother. The way the final season derails the show's events, thanks to real-life issues, has made the show completely irrelevant today in pop culture, with few bothering to start watching it because they know how botched the ending was handled.
11. YMMV.Kuma Miko Girl Meets Bear: The anime's Gecko Ending, in which Machi is traumatized after performing in front of a crowd and has a mental breakdown that undoes all of the growth she underwent throughout the show and then some, while causing her to give up on her dream of living in the city, became a hot topic after the show's airing. This Esoteric Happy Ending quickly became the most infamous and reviled aspect of what would otherwise have been a fairly unremarkable anime. One Twitter comment that was used in a few articles covering the controversy basically said the show started off fun but will likely go down in history as "That mind break show with the bear."
12. YMMV.Miracle Mile: The story could be the textbook example of Shoot the Shaggy Dog. Not only was Chip telling the truth, meaning a global-scale nuclear holocaust, but everything Harry does throughout the story ultimately was in vain and gets him and Julie killed. Upon the original run in theaters, this killed the movie dead in the box office.
13. YMMV.No Mans Sky: Not long after the game was released, players had already managed to reach the center of the galaxy. And what did they find? Absolutely nothing. Instead it begins a New Game Plus, where the player is teleported to another galaxy without any kind of reward or plot revelation. Obviously, people who found out about this ending decided the game was not worth buying.
14. YMMV.Digimon Adventure Last Evolution Kizuna: When key information regarding the plot was revealed online due to preview and domestic screenings, many were disappointed by the ending and told others whose countries' screenings were delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic to not bother watching the film in theatres. Complaints boil down to "nostalgia bait", "lack of resolution on previously established plot points" and "sequel baiting in a (supposed) finale".
15. YMMV.The Amazing Spider Man J Michael Straczynski: Straczynski's run was critically acclaimed and, alongside Raimi's Spider-Man Trilogy and Bendis' Ultimate Spider-Man, was a major contributor to Spider-Man's popularity during The 2000s. However, a significant amount of readers advise new fans to skip it (or at least its second half), since the story reaches its conclusion in One More Day, widely regarded as the worst Spider-Man story ever written.
16. YMMV.Final Space: With the series confirmed cancelled, a vocal portion of fans warn newcomers not to waste their time, as season 3 ends on an unresolved cliffhanger with Invictus breaking out of Final Space.
17. YMMV.The Turning: Lots of reviews cite the ending as the film's ultimate downfall, with many recommending others not to waste their time because it's very abrupt, confusing and unsatisfactory (given the film's lackluster box office returns, it would seem audiences took this advice). It was trying for an Ambiguous Ending in the same vein as the original novella, leaving it open-ended as to whether there were really ghosts or the protagonist was just mentally ill, but it ends up feeling unfinished more than anything.

1. YMMV.ANNO Mutationem: The original ending divided a lot of fans, some reviews going so far as to say it ruined the experience. Some complain that the Circle Consortium winning and basically enslaving Ann at the end of the game is an unsatisfying and left-field way to end the game, and others complain that the entire late game introduces too many elements and new characters then abruptly ends the game when so much was left unexplored, and others (most of whom are unaware about that game being originally part of the SCP universe until it was changed) that the sudden shift into the paranormal and supernatural elements from a rather normal Cyberpunk series was just too dramatic of a genre shift. Fortunately, the ending has been completely revamped to address the aforementioned complaints.
2. YMMV.Azure Striker Gunvolt:
   • The True Ending of this game has drawn harsh criticism for veering sharply into Esoteric Happy Ending. Gunvolt survives... but turns into a mysterious azure light and flies off into the unknown, completely denying him of any possible happy ending despite the crap he's gone through for three whole games. The world is arguably worse off than it was before the game started with Adepts beginning to go berserk into Primal Dragons world-wide, with the only differences between the two endings being whether Gunvolt lives or dies, Kirin's resolve to face the coming dangers with the other Dragon Saviors on her side until she can perhaps see GV again, and confirming ATEMS has abandoned their goal for the sake of protecting the innocents from the Primal Dragon attacks. Many fans feel that this direction was a massive cop-out and that the writers backed themselves into a corner for the sake of a Sequel Hook; some fans even argue that the bad ending was better written just because it felt like a conclusive finish and appropriately tragic, even if it just cuts off abruptly with no afterward on how the world is affected. Luckily, the PC port released an updated version of the ending which gives crucial context for Gunvolt's fate and ultimately resolves his story in a substantially more satisfying way while still leaving the series open for sequels.
   • Fans who were wondering what happened to the Sequel Hook from Gunvolt 2 weren't super thrilled about the joke ending reducing a tantalizing plot thread into a gag.
3. YMMV.Battlestar Galactica 2003: At the end of the series, the Galactica finally discovers Earth, which turns out to be prehistoric. To prevent another Robot War from occurring, the human refugees suddenly become luddites and destroy all of their advanced technology so they can live out their days in poverty and as far away from each other as possible. The Inferred Holocaust isn't just implied here, it's noted that the little girl that Adama wasted numerous lives to rescue from the Cylons, Hera Agathon, died young and in childbirth. This ending massively pissed off fans, since the entire show turned out to be All for Nothing.
4. YMMV.Belle 2021: Several viewers thought this about the movie's ending, in which Kei, Tomo and their dad’s ultimate fates were not physically resolved.
5. YMMV.BNA Brand New Animal: A majority of the fanbase considers the ending to be a rushed, overloaded mess. It throws plot-twist after plot-twist at the viewer, with some of them being barely or not at all foreshadowed, crams in a last-second boss-fight against an overpowered Big Bad whose powers come out of nowhere and jumbles pretty much all of its messages and themes in an effort to wrap everything up at once
6. YMMV.Captain Earth: The Ambiguous Ending. Some aren’t happy that nobody knows what happened to Daichi and Hana.
7. YMMV.Domestic Girlfriend: Even the most staunch supporters of the winning ship weren't sure what to make of the ending. Between Tanabe coming back to meddle, Hina going into a coma for five years, Natsuo impregnating Rui and their decision to stay unmarried, and Natsuo deciding to marry Hina while still living with Rui and his daughter, everyone was downright confused.
8. YMMV.Game Of Thrones: Potential viewers who were waiting for the show to conclude before watching are likely to hear about the controversies of the final season, so they can easily be turned off from watching if they've heard about the ending. Quite a few former fans have gone so far as to admit that they can't even bring themselves to rewatch the much lauded earlier seasons, knowing that it all doesn't matter in the end. A recurring joke is that the only people that still talk about the show are reviews and analysis on how bad the final seasons are. That being said, and contrary to some predictions, it didn't prevent the first season of House of the Dragon from becoming a big success and a return to the early Game of Thrones form for HBO. Technically misuse now due to the last sentence, which is why I am advocating for the definition change.
9. YMMV.How I Met Your Mother: The series finale is one of the most controversial, love-it-or-hate-it endings on record. Barney and Robin get divorced after only three years; Barney goes right back to his womanizing ways and fathers a child with one of his one-night stands; Tracy (a.k.a. the Mother) is revealed to have died in 2024; the kids encourage Ted to go after Robin yet again. The meltdown among fans and critics was big enough to make the news and is likely to haunt the series for years to come, although some fans have been mollified by the alternate ending released with Season 9's DVDs (which basically just leaves out the unpopular bits at the very end).
10. YMMV.If Its For My Daughter Id Even Defeat A Demon Lord: Many western fans were outraged that the series ends in a similar manner to the equally infamous Bunny Drop with Dale marrying a grown up Latina. These fans hated the ending since they originally enjoyed the series for a being a cute story of a hero bonding with a little girl he sees as his adopted daughter but got disgusted that it turned into a Wife Husbandry story where Latina suddenly says she never saw Dale as a father figure but as a love interest. The novel's handling of this development— that nobody treats Dale as Latina's primary caretaker even when young, Dale becoming immortal to match her lifespan and Latina being much older than she looks— did little to please these fans. Because of this, most fans recommend to only watch the anime, as, much like the Bunny Drop anime, it stops after volume 3 and thus avoids the squicky ending entirely.
11. YMMV.Listen To Me Girls I Am Your Father: For many, the fact that Yuuta and Sora end up with each other, despite the age difference and family ties, is a big turnoff for the story. Some are quite happy to pretend the story ended where the anime did.
12. YMMV.Lost: The ending, if not the final season as a whole, wound up as this for those who disliked the more metaphysical angle, with several of the mysteries being unanswered.
13. YMMV.Kingdom Hearts III: Many fans have been turned-off by the conclusion, with Master Xehanort's death scene (often viewed as unfairly peaceful compared to what his victims endured) and Sora's last-second Heroic Sacrifice being the sorest spots. The ending is also derided for feeling less like an ending with a sequel hook like the first two games were and more like an attempt to set up the next arc with no regard to the one that just ended.
14. YMMV.King Lear: While not the case today, there was much derision towards the ending when it was first performed, tainting the play to many in their eyes. It was so strong that for centuries a slightly happier ending was written and exclusively performed where Cordelia survives and marries Edgar.
15. YMMV.Kissing Jessica Stein: The ending is generally the least liked part of this movie due to how it renders Jessica and Helen's relationship pointless and has Jessica end up with Josh
16. YMMV.Science Fell In Love So I Tried To Prove It: The final episode of season 2 of the anime adaptation goes for a Drama Bomb Finale that invokes Mood Whiplash to and from the lighthearted comedic tone of the rest of the anime, which has disappointed a lot of viewers.
17. YMMV.Sly Cooper Thieves In Time: The game's cliffhanger ending was always contentious, but once it was announced there were no plans for a sequel, retroactively turning it into a Downer Ending for the franchise, what fans it had wound up disowning and rejecting the game, with backlash over the ending and how it tanked creator Sanzaru Games' reputation.
18. WebAnimation.Terrible Writing Advice: Invoked. Referenced in "Ending A Story" where J.P. points out that if the ending is bad, people will only remember the botched ending, no matter how well the rest of the story is written.
19. VideoGame.Bug Fables: In-Universe, the final book the group finds for Reeves for the quest Awful's Beauty is what he himself considers too awful, even for him, because while the book did start off amazing at first, as he puts it: "IT WAS ALL A DREAM! AND THEN A ROCK CRUSHES THE MAIN CHARACTER!!!"
20. YMMV.Yami To Boushi To Hon No Tabibito: Yuri fans who loved seeing a lesbian romance that seemed headed towards Official Couple status hated the ending where they are broken up and instead Hatsumi will somehow be born to Hazuki who will be a teenage mother.
21. Some players were not particularly enthused about Kairi still being unable to hold her own in a fight and needing Sora to come to her aid yet again, although it's at least against one of the most powerful Keyblade wielders in existence with neither him nor Sora being technically "real" at the moment which means it makes sense that only Sora can defeat him. There's also the fact that she declines to go to Quadratum due to her inexperience and decides to stay behind to train, with fans dreading another Kingdom Hearts III scenario where she suffers from severe Can't Catch Up and is almost permanently sidelined because of it.
22. YMMV.American Horror Story Double Feature: Big time. While the endings of past seasons have become known for being of weaker quality when compared to previous episodes of the season, they still were usually considered to be at least adequate and watchable. This definitely was not the case for Double Feature.
    • While much of Red Tide was lauded by critics and viewers for its high-quality tone and writing (even by the show's typical standards), that praise came to a screeching halt once its finale aired, which was heavily criticized for its rushed pacing, lazy execution, and cynical direction.
    • For the season as a whole, Death Valley was considered by many to be among the worst episodes in the entire history of the show; the needlessly convoluted and lackadaisical plot — constantly jumping from the mid-20th century scenes (which were comparatively more well-received due to their clever historical in-jokes and providing something new to the show with a conspiracy-driven narrative) to an incredibly underwhelming present-day story (despite the already vastly shorter episode runtimes), its total lack of connection to Red Tide, the awfully written protagonists, weak performances (with Kaia Gerber often being singled out in reviews for her terrible acting) and complete absence of direction quickly caused viewers to cry Seasonal Rot.
    • To put into perspective how negatively received the season as a whole eventually was, both finales of each half are the lowest-rated episodes in the entire series on IMDb, with the other episodes of Death Valley close behind.
23. DethroningMoment.Video Games: cricri3007: The ending of The Following. The main game ended on a bittersweet ending, so the expansion starts by undoing every effort you made in the main game, sending Crane to the countryside to search for a cure. Then comes the Downer Ending: There is no cure. The only reason people in the countryside don't transform is because they've been infected with a special slower-acting strain of the virus which allows them to retain their human form and consciousness during the daylight. So, having found this "cure", you can decide to either nuke everything to destroy it, or try to return to the Tower where Lena can make more of it or try to complete it. If you choose the second option, the Mother force-feeds Kyle an entire vial of the stuff and forces him to kill her, after which Kyle, delerious, still tries to make his way back to the Tower, slowly losing his mind in the process. Then he exits the sewer outside of the quarantine zone, where he kills or infects a mother and her kid, thus spreading the infection to the whole world. There's a reason it's listed on the Audience-Alienating Ending page. After an ending like that, I can only say fuck that ending for ruining the whole game.
24. YMMV.The Tomorrow People 1973: The final season comprised of a single serial, "War of Empires" and is widely considered to be a low point for the series to end on, due to its attempting to emulate Star Wars on a British television budget and failing miserably. The fact that it suffered from various behind-the-scenes problems didn't help and led to the series being cancelled.
25. YMMV.The Hunter: Fanon Discontinuity: Some fans feel that the fatal fire at the Armstrong home and/or Martin going through with killing the tiger is an Audience-Alienating Ending and would prefer not to acknowledge those events.
26. Recap.Avatar The Last Airbender The Ember Island Players: The play's ending is this in-universe for Toph. Unlike the rest of Team Avatar, she was actually enjoying the play, finding the way everyone else was portrayed to be hilarious and loving how she was portrayed as a tough and awesome Boisterous Bruiser. However, the play's ending where Zuko and Aang are killed and the Fire Nation wins the war is too much even for her, and she ends up agreeing with everyone else that the play was horrible. Misuse as individual opinions not general in-universe audience (who liked it due to Deliberate Values Dissonance).
27. YMMV.Paper Trail: The comic ends on a cliffhanger, as the SOUL disconnects from Kris in order to free them and stop the Knight's plan from coming to fruition. Many fans were turned off by this ending, finding it to be a cop-out that doesn't work well in a non-interactive medium.
28. YMMV.The Suicide Of Rachel Foster: Lots of players have stated they didn't mind the game's plot and could've viewed it as a decent Environmental Narrative Game if it weren't for the ending, due to it never actively condemning Leonard's actions and instead pushing all the blame on his wife; while she is certainly guilty of killing Rachel, the narrative glosses over the married Leonard having an inappropriate relationship with a teenager, and even seems to present him sympathetically. Both protagonists abruptly committing suicide, or alternatively Nicole going insane, also made the whole thing seem pointless and unnecessarily bleak to some players.

1. YMMV.Deponia: Some players declared the ending of Goodbye Deponia enough to make the entire trilogy up to that point almost not worth playing, if this is the conclusion it all led to.
2. YMMV.Dexter: Even years after the final season concluded, you can still find people warning newbies who've just started to stop at Season 4. Plenty follow the advice, if they even start the watch the show at all because of the ending backlash.
3. YMMV.Haven Call Of The King: If you already know the game's notoriously depressing ending, and the fact that a sequel will almost certainly never happen, there's no point in getting invested in the game's story — which as seen above, has its own share of problems anyways.
4. YMMV.I Know What You Did Last Summer: A lot of people aren't wild about the ending scene, to the point that the sequel retconned it as just being a dream of Julie's.
5. YMMV.Wonder Egg Priority: The show's finale and the plot points within it (detailed more in the Esoteric Happy Ending and Fanon Discontinuity examples below) was so heavily reviled by fans and critics that it ultimately tarnished the show's once positive reputation overnight.