Alternate Endings

For the 2020 meme format, please refer to Good Ending / Bad Ending

About

Alternative Endings may refer to either unpublished footage or works of fan-fiction films that offer a different conclusion to a story. While deleted scenes of alternative endings are sometimes included in their DVD releases, on the Internet, alternative endings are typically presented as fan-made parodies or satirical sketches that poke fun at their canonical counterparts,

Origin

On December 20th, 1986, an episode of the comedy sketch show Saturday Night Live featured a sketch depicting an alternative ending to the classic Christmas movie It's a Wonderful Life in which the George Bailey beats up Mr. Potter.

Spread

Following the launch of YouTube in 2006, alternate ending videos filmed and/or edited by amateur fans rapidly began to grow in numbers, with some of the earliest submissions parodying The Notebook, I am Legend, Spider-Man 3, and Star Wars Episode III (shown below).

On March 6th, 2007, the YouTube channel How It Should Have Ended^[1], which creates animated alternative endings, posted its first video, an alternative ending for Star Wars Episode IV (top left). As of February 2014, the video has over 8.9 million views and the channel has over 3.2 million subscribers. The channel has created alternative endings for films such as Harry Potter (top right), Titanic (bottom left), and Iron Man (bottom right).

On May 18th, 2008, Funny or Die^[2] posted a video filled with alternative endings to Juno that featured the titular character killing her baby, created in the style of official DVD alternative endings complete with actor commentary. As of February 2014, the video has over 2,300 views.

On May 24th, 2011, College Humor^[3] posted a video featuring an alternative ending for Back to the Future that revealed Biff committed suicide because of "Calvin Klein."

On November 17th, 2013, TVWeb uploaded an alternative ending to the TV drama Breaking Bad that imagined the whole series was just the nightmare of Bryan Cranston's character from Malcolm in the Middle.

The video created an idea that fans had joked about on Tumblr for several season, that Malcolm in the Middle and Breaking Bad took place in the same world. The video was covered by websites such as The Huffington Post^[4] and Buzzfeed.^[5] As of February 2014, the video has over 650,000 views.

Related Memes

Good Ending / Bad Ending

Good Ending / Bad Ending, also known as All Endings, refers to a series of memes that present various scenarios as a good, bad or another type of ending for a certain event or cultural phenomenon. The format gained popularity in the form of ironic Demotivational Poster videos in May 2020. In the memes, good and bad ending music themes from Fight Nights at Freddy's 3 are often used. Typical variations of the meme include Neutral Ending, True Ending and Secret Ending.

Search Interest

External References