r/TopCharacterTropes • u/MeepMan324 • 6d ago

Hated Tropes (Hated Trope) Endings so awful they completely destroy the legacy of the media.

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  1. Two and a Half Men's final episode teased Charlie Sheen's character coming back and going to harm the other characters whilst also having insults to his character and Charlie Sheen himself. It's clear the director had a grudge and the ending where his character comes up to knock then get crushed by a piano before it cuts to the director before he says "winning" before getting crushed by another piano
  2. This was an upbeat animated show about a magical teen princess. The writers desperately wanted a romantic endgame for her and her best friend, but the way they got there was essentially multiversal omnicide. To stop a villain, the main character unilaterally decides magic is the root of all evil and destroys it entirely. By doing this, she casually commits mass genocide against every purely magical being in the multiverse. It also triggers a massive apocalyptic event that violently crashes different dimensions together into a chaotic hellscape. But the show frames this horrific, mass-extinction catastrophe as a sweet, triumphant ending just because two teenagers get to hold hands in the rubble (Star Vs The Forces Of Evil)
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5.3k

u/irihS 6d ago

obligatory game of thrones karma farm mention

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u/Viggo_Stark 6d ago

It was absolutely fucing shit though

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u/irihS 6d ago

it really, really, really, really, really was. truly generational levels of awful.

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u/Viggo_Stark 6d ago

I was engrossed by the show since it aired. I read all the books because of it. And by the time the credits rolled on that last episode I didn't care anymore. And that might be really be the bigest insult I can give it.

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u/Winjin 6d ago

I remember GoT merch being EVERYWHERE

Everyone was invested. It was on tracks to become an absolute gravy train

And the thing is, the legacy was basically erased. It's like it almost did not exist, and it was so bad, that even the spin-offs, while they exist, are barely relevant. They are just... there. Sort of.

I see almost no merch, barely any cosplay, games, etc

Hell, The Witcher LARP event had like 2,000 participants a couple years ago. THOUSANDS of people dressed up and showed up to play as regular folks, because there were like what, maybe thirty witchers in the entire thing. Warhammer LARP events in Moscow have had 1k+ people since 2018 or something similarly wild, excluding the Covid times

Last big GoT game was had before season finale, there is basically zero interest in larping them. I'd say that seems like a pretty good indicator of the fan response being like "eh, we're not interested enough to throw together costumes and camp for a week"

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u/ebietoo 6d ago

What about all those poor little girls named Khalissi? Go through life like that, or change your name? I know what I’d do, even if it made home for the holidays hellish.

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u/kevinspaceyiskeyser 6d ago

They will be ok for the first 4 seasons even 6 but after that who knows

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u/RA576 6d ago

I mean, that was stupid even before the show shit the bed. That was a title, not a name. "Dany" would be a slightly unusual, but still acceptable name for a girl, like you don't even need to change it.

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u/Turbulent_Lunch4548 6d ago

Poor Khalissi, their parents didn't even spell (title not a name) 'Khaleesi' right.

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u/ebietoo 6d ago

No that’s my fault. Transcription error.

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u/Naive-Vehicle-6845 6d ago

I live in Northern Ireland where GoT was partially filmed. It was huge for little rural towns because they'd have loads of tourists coming through to see filming locations where previously these towns were barely on maps. I drove through one 10ish years ago and they had Stark banners hanging outside the Tesco because the tourism they were getting was insane. That is how big GoT was, and then it all just vanished after the finale because it was so bad

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u/Winjin 6d ago

Oh man and imagine how many folks made extensive repairs\repaints in preparations for the finale and the incoming boom of tourists after that... Poor folks must have lost quite a lot of money when the tourism fizzled out.

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u/revanisthesith 6d ago

That's something I often mention when people talk about how the cultural impact just died. I think there are still GoT tours in Dubrovnik, Croatia, but they already had a lot of tourism.

I particularly feel bad for the places that didn't have as many visitors who invested in it and had it just die.

People still do Lord of the Rings tours in New Zealand and probably will be for a very long time. There's a market for things like that. But not much for GoT.

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u/MrNotEinstein 6d ago

Also from Northern Ireland, its kinda crazy how big it was at the time. I remember planning family outings based on the filming schedule of the show. We had a picnic while watching them film parts of the battle of the bastards.

I was also part of a funeral that happened to be going past them filming something in county down. Everyone who was there for the show stopped and stayed quiet until we were well past them, which i thought was very sweet. Im not sure what scene they were filming at that point but I do know Kit Harrington was there and I think Sophie Turner. I wish I had been able to stay and watch but unfortunately I had to go and sit in the cold while they buried some great uncle I had met once when I was 3

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u/MF_Bfg 6d ago

Pretty sure Dubrovnik still has a thriving GOT tourism sector, but that tracks.

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u/dino_spice 6d ago edited 6d ago

I feel like GoT was the last show we had that was remotely close to monocultural in terms of its popularity. I don't know whether I'd go so far as to say that its decline was a major contributor to the death of the monoculture, but I don't think there's been another TV show that's totally consumed society the way GoT did since it ended.

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u/Winjin 6d ago

I agree that I feel it was, actually, too. It was one of these giant things that burned out thousands of people. No one wants to commit to yet another epic story that will end with a wet fart. I can't think of a single show that gripped so many people at once.

Like all the merch I see now is kids merch, as it always were. Bluey for kids and teen-sized Kpop Demon Hunters all the way. Adults don't really have anything they are ready to trust again so far

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u/noahsense1 6d ago

House of the Dragon isn’t as relevant in pop culture right now, but Knight of the Seven Kingdoms was hella popular when it was airing. I’m sure the next season is going to blow up quite a bit when it comes out.

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u/alurkerhere 6d ago

Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is excellent! It's a lot of fun and very entertaining. They hit it out of the park with that one.

House of the Dragon... yeah I stopped watching.

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u/Fargoth_took_my_ring 6d ago

Genuinely never heard of that one

And I read the Dunk and Egg stories

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u/noahsense1 6d ago

I highly recommend watching it! Very down to earth midieval vibes as you probably know fron the books

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u/Zykium 6d ago

It's pretty great, casting is amazing and GRRM has given them the outline to Dunk and Egg stories that haven't been published.

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u/CometGoat 6d ago

It was funny going to Dubrovnik in Croatia, where the old town was used to film kings landing. I completely forgot about kings landing until I saw magnets for sale

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u/Bloodyjorts 6d ago

I remember maybe like...a year or two after it ended, I saw a reddit post from a person who said their job was directly connected to licensed merchandising and whatnot. They said that while the show was airing, GoT Merchandising was an absolute juggernaut that you don't often see from a franchise meant for adults. But after the finale, it near immediately fell off a cliff. They couldn't give the stuff away, and nobody wanted to partner with HBO to make GoT merchandise. Usually even when a series ends, the merch sales will coast for a good long while. Not GoT.

Now, I know it's the Internets and people lie, but what this poster was saying DID line up with what I was hearing from people I knew in real life, who ran stores that sold fandom merch or worked in places that made it. HBO had to be freaking out, because they made so much money off of merch.

GoT merch sales never really recovered. With HOTD, the show isn't consistently good, and they cannot figure out what the fandom actually wants (it's not cringey Rhaenyra quotes on a teeshirt, my guys), and I don't think I've seen anything made for AKOT7K, despite how well received it was. The illustrated editions of the books did pretty okay, until the publishers decided to go with obviously Gen-AI (with a sloppy paintover) for AFFC.

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u/Winjin 6d ago

Yeah it's not like anyone did show us sales numbers but there's a lot of indications that the ending was so bad, it just fizzled out both nerds and pop people alike, even a lot of fans were no longer interested in being associated with it. 

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u/UtterlyInsane 6d ago

The Americans could have taken that spot in the cultural zeitgeist, it has the quality and the drama and sex/intrigue that sold so many on GoT. Also the ending was fantastic.

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u/[deleted] 6d ago

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u/Glory_63 6d ago

My parents described to me that the last season of LOST left similar vibes (idk though, never watched it)

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u/CommitteeNew5751 6d ago

Similar, but not as bad. Lost had already lost a lot of its hype by then.

I'm saying this as someone who enjoyed the end of Lost, though, so YMMV.

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u/kalez238 6d ago

Yeah, the difference there is that Lost ending can be enjoyed by a decent amount of people still (myself included), where as the ending of GoT was just terrible to almost everyone.

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u/edgiepower 6d ago edited 6d ago

I never watched it, but I worked in a liquor store that sold Game of Thrones branded Johnnie Walker.

It was a steady seller for a gimmick brand, but I can tell you, sales died in the arse when season 8 finished. Literally overnight.

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u/waldeinsamkeit666 6d ago

same, I was also super into the series and started reading the books because of it. couldn’t even bring myself to watch the last season. I even had plans to get a GOT tattoo, thank god that didn’t end up happening 😱

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u/testmonkey254 6d ago

I remember when the leaks were coming out and I was seeking them because I honestly did not care anymore. I read the bran becomes king leak and I immediately thought to myself that one's fake he is the worst possible person story wise to win the throne at the end.

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u/LoseNotLooseIdiot 6d ago

Same. I was willing to try House of the Dragon, and while it isn't a bad show, it feels like they're wasting so much potential with what you can do in that world.

Knight of the Seven Kingdoms was really good, but when I think about how excited I was every week for the next episode of GoT back in the day, it really pales in comparison...

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u/Key-Effect8176 6d ago

My spouse and I were debating starting GoT as we did not watch it when it was originally airing, but I have the concern about how bad people say the ending is. On the other hand, he did point out that we stuck it out through the end of The Walking Dead, and my god those last few seasons were just terrible.

Would you recommend we stop at a certain point before the last season or just suffer through for the full experience lol

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u/Viggo_Stark 6d ago

No. Even with the dissapointment that was the end I still recommend watching it. First few seasons are brilliant, after that's its good. But the final season is dogshit, yet it's still based off notes from the author so in broad strokes is the ending its supposed to be, just feels unearned and rushed. You should watch it though

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u/creepycrawlingspace 6d ago

My laptop battery died on the last 5 minutes of the last episode and since today I never bothered to watch them. Complete loss of interest in that show I adored for years and spent many hours watching theory vids on youtube for.

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u/mightbeyourpal 6d ago

Attempted a rewatch recently- got 5 minutes into the first episodes, yelled WHAT'S THE FUCKING POINT to the empty room and turned it off.

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u/UnquestionabIe 6d ago

But that first scene includes the magical gang tag the not zombies love! Sure it amounts to absolutely nothing and the entire threat is settled in the course of a single afternoon (maybe having a load bearing final boss was a bad idea?) but ummm at least it got an ending? Yeah don't blame you at all, might as well have stopped after season 4 and invented our own ending

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u/ApprehensiveSoup2214 6d ago

When Arya first killed the Ice King (so lame) I thought it was just some minor minion of the king, and this was the first battle of the war.

Imagine my surprise when I realized... that was it.

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u/BillCarson12799 6d ago edited 6d ago

This had the potential to be one of the most culturally important works of fiction of the era, something that people would rewatch endlessly, but instead, the ending was so bad that it immediately nullified all of its cultural relevance like a car hitting a concrete pillar at 150mph.

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u/forman98 6d ago

I didn’t watch it, but I remember being really annoyed that Reddit front page was basically spoiling everything about the show as soon as it came out. Every major event resulted in tons of memes across multiple subreddits. It was a pop culture moment that got somewhat annoying with how all encompassing it was. Literally my other shows that were airing at the time were referencing it. It was everywhere.

Then it crapped out so hard I couldn’t help but laugh. Truly something to be studied with how quickly it faded from memory. From like 2012 until 2016ish, it was the biggest thing in pop culture. The last couple seasons (coupled with political hot topics of 2017 and 18) made its star power wane. But from 2012 to 2016 it was all over the place.

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u/ChiefsHat 6d ago

It was remarkable, wasn’t it?

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u/EdanChaosgamer 6d ago

To this day, I‘ve still never started watching GoT because I keep hearing people say that the ending is absolute shit, and I‘d rather not get invested in something that will end horribly :/

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u/CannonGerbil 6d ago

It practically turned game of thrones from being a pop cultural touchstone to being passe overnight. Seriously, you could feel it's cultural impact vanish over the course of three months.

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u/Draelmar 6d ago

I enjoy trying to figure out what is the simplest way to fix a series that fucked their ending. With GoT there's no "simplest", because it's unfixable, other than just maybe deleting the last two seasons and just abruptly end it and leave it open-ended.

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u/DarkApostleMatt 6d ago

I can see it being salvageable into a somewhat passable end if they had stretched the last two seasons into three regular sized seasons instead of basically speed-running it like they did.

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u/DarkApostleMatt 6d ago

I really don't understand how the directors got away with it without HBO turning them into new Bolton skin banners with how badly they fumbled it to the point where GOT as a cultural phenomena was muted for years after.

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u/KiwiCounselor 6d ago

Killed Dumb and Dumbers careers though

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u/Anti_Phile_7410 6d ago

Nah they're doing 3 body problem right now and it's amazing.

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u/Sehri437 6d ago

That’s the thing about dumb and dumber. Through GoT they’ve shown they can adapt existing material wonderfully (GoT S1-4 and TBP) but suck at making original stories (GoT S5-8)

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u/bolobar 6d ago

Idk about that. They completely changed so much of the story. Idk why they had to take a Chinese author’s story about a Chinese scientist and turn that character into like 8 British people.

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u/A_Bit_Of_Nonsense 6d ago

I can see why they made them British. I cannot understand why they made them 3 seperate people with one of the smartest of the lot also being a supermodel.

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u/Ill-Preparation-3598 6d ago

yea the chinesity was kind of the point of the whole thing.

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u/angwilwileth 6d ago

At least the Chinese adaptation of the story was faithful. It's the slowest of slow burns, but the acting is good and the show really nails the cosmic horror and creeping existential dread of the books.

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u/Rhumbear907 6d ago

The book is stilted and nonsensical and the show is somehow 10x worse.

Im convinced its fame is a fucking psy op.

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u/fiercedeitysponce 6d ago

At least the source material is complete

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u/JadedSignificance990 6d ago

Also been adapted before, one time as a Minecraft cartoon, (no seriously) and is also getting another adaptation from Zhang Yimou.

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u/Flincher14 6d ago

That show with 1 season and an announced date for season 2 this year that's almost over.

Published by Netflix. Notorious for never finishing any original series. Directed by DND who are notorious for finishing things badly.

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u/BonkerBleedy 6d ago

I refuse to watch it. Fuck those guys.

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u/root_and_stem 6d ago

Give it time, the early seasons of Game of Thrones didn't suck, $10 says they will fuck up 3 Body Problem too

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u/ThrowawayFuckYourMom 6d ago

Did it? Or did we fail that, too?

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u/endlesscartwheels 6d ago

We failed that, possibly because most people refer to them as D&D or similar, rather than Benioff and Weiss.

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u/MordorsElite 6d ago

Absolutely generational fumble. I recently rewatched the show and the magic really is still there for the first couple of seasons. Then you get to season 7, which could have been an email. The first 3 episodes of S08 at least felt like a weird version of GoT. But then in S08E04, I just left half way through. I spent a few weeks dedicating hours and hours to bingewatching the entire show again. But even then I couldn't make it through the last 3 episodes.

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u/themastersdaughter66 6d ago

Game of thrones only has 4 seasons and you'll drag me to a padded room screaming it 🤣🤣🤣