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KD
Since: May, 2009
17th Jun, 2021 02:45:38 PM
More generally, there is Cutting Off the Branches for "There are 10 endings, but we declare Ending #3 to be canon for the sake of the sequel." It does not necessarily imply the ending chosen is good or bad.
eroock
Since: Sep, 2012
17th Jun, 2021 02:46:08 PM
Just the inversion of No Canon for the Wicked.
AxemTitanium
Since: Jun, 2009
18th Jun, 2021 10:01:45 AM
Should examples of this be posted in a sub-folder at No Canon for the Wicked then?
In games (or other mediums) with Multiple Endings, the sequel will canonically follow the "Bad" ending rather than one of the "Good" endings. I'm not seeing an existing trope that covers this but here are some examples. This is an ending trope so there will be spoilers.
- Shadow Hearts series
- Shadow Hearts continues from the bad ending of Koudelka in which James sacrifices himself to destroy the Final Boss. His grave appears in Shadow Hearts.
- Shadow Hearts: Covenant likewise continues from the bad ending of Shadow Hearts. Alice dies at the end of the previous game, trading her life for Yuri's to protect him from Atman's curse. Covenant opens with Yuri digging Alice's grave.
- Inverted with the ending to Covenant. In the "good" ending of Covenant, Yuri travels back in time to the beginning of the first Shadow Hearts with his memories intact in an attempt to replay the events of that game and save Alice. Shadow Hearts: From the New World implies that he succeeds in achieving the good ending of Shadow Hearts.
- Dragon Quest Builders and Dragon Quest Builders 2 take place after choices that lead to the bad ending of Dragon Quest and Dragon Quest II, respectively. The first Builders is an Alternate Timeline in which the hero agrees to join forces with the evil Dragonlord.
- The NieR and Drakengard timelines are a complicated mess.
- NieR takes place after Ending E of Drakengard, in which the main characters and the Final Boss get transported to modern day Tokyo and are destroyed by a fighter jet. A virus is released by the villain's decaying body which ends up decimating the human population and results in the state of the world seen in NieR.
- NieR: Automata is a farflung future continuing from Ending D, which leads to Ending E which is only seen in a novella in an artbook for Nier (later adapted for inclusion in Nier ver.1.22474487139...).
- Under certain conditions, playthroughs of Undertale may take place after the "Genocide" route of the game. This causes minor changes to appear throughout all future playthroughs that imply that they are aware of the player's actions on a previously reset timeline.
- The Life Is Strange comics series follows from the "Sacrifice Arcadia Bay" ending of the game, although which ending of the game is "good" or "bad" is a matter of personal opinion.
Edited by AxemTitanium