History Main / OnlyTheLeadsGetAHappyEnding

* Maggie Furey seems to have a thing for pulling this off quite well, at the end of her ''Artefacts of Power'' series, if you're not a friend of Aurian, you're looking at a bleak life... and even then, two of her friends are stuck ruling a province for someone they don't like ruling under, too many people simply die, the Nightrunners don't really have a home anymore, (and if Faerie rule has a bad effect on trade they might not have much of a living either), and the three Xandim protagonists are outcasts of the to-be-brought-back-in-chains variant. Let's just say it's reasonable that Aurian wants to take some time off with her child, lover, and [[NonHumanSidekick a couple of]] [[PantheraAwesome big black cats]].

* ''RedRidingHood'': The village continues to live in fear even though the Wolf never returned. Valerie's mother has no one left, except Valerie who now lives [[spoiler:in her dead grandmother's house]] and it's unknown if they see each other. Peter [[spoiler:, after being bitten by the Wolf on a Blood Moon and thus becoming one every full moon]] returns to Valerie at the end of the movie [[spoiler: after running away for some time to learn to control his werewolf power]] and the end credits show them being happy together.

* ''RedRidingHood'': The village continues to live in fear even though the Wolf never returned. Valerie's mother has no one left, except Valerie who now lives in her dead grandmother's house and it's unknown if they see eachother. Peter [[spoiler:, after being bitten by the Wolf on a Blood Moon and thus becoming one every full moon]] returns to Valerie at the end of the movie [[spoiler: after running away for some time to learn to control his werewolf power]] and the end credits show them being happy together.

* RedRidingHood: The village continues to live in fear even though the Wolf never returned. Valerie's mother has no one left, except Valerie who now lives in her dead grandmother's house and it's unknown if they see eachother. Peter [[spoiler:, after being bitten by the Wolf on a Blood Moon and thus becoming one every full moon]] returns to Valerie at the end of the movie [[spoiler: after running away for some time to learn to control his werewolf power]] and the end credits show them being happy together.

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* ''SaturdayNightFever''. Tony heads to the big city to dance on broadway! He gets the girl! Well... the girl who wasn't treated like dirt, raped, and then forgotten about, that is. And let's just forget Tony's friend Bobby C, who falls off the Verrazanno-Narrows Bridge during an act of depressed recklessness.

* The end of ''{{Birth Of A Nation}}'', with the main characters happily married and the Klan firmly in control of the South, is kind of like that. Or maybe that's just {{Values Dissonance}}.

* In ''HellboyII: The Golden Army'', the movie ends with Liz and Hellboy planning on their future together with their children. Abe Sapien, on the other hand, gets to mourn the death of his lost love, Princess Nuala, who [[HeroicSacrifice killed herself]] to stop her brother from destroying the human world.
* ''Film/{{Avatar}}''. Jake Sully and his alien catgirlfriend Neytiri get to live happily ever after. The last two humans on the planet (both friends of Jake's, remember) are likely going to starve or suffocate soon, and there's the fact that thousands of Na'vi are now dead (including Neytiri's father and former boyfriend), but at least the love-birds are together, right?
* ''{{Signs}}''. Millions or billions of people have been killed or enslaved by the alien invasion, but god smiled on this one family and saved them so yay!

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** That would depend on how you view the whole love spell thing. A common interpretation now is to see it as incredibly [[{{Squick}} squicky]] mind control quasi-rape, but a number of older works seem to view magically induced love as being just as valid as naturally occurring love. This is particularly prominent once you get back to ClassicalMythology, where ''all'' love is the result of the gods going, "Okay, you hook up with that person, and you hook up with that person, and ... oh, how about we give that guy a donkey fetish?"

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* ''[[{{Fable}} Fable 2]]''. The Needs Of the One ending.

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* This sort-of happens in ''Series/RobinHood''. Both Robin Hood and Marian end up ''dead'', but they are given a TogetherInDeath scene that suggests that they have an eternity in Heaven to share. Everyone else? Buried under rubble, shot in the back, separated from their families, forgotten in the Holy Land, or stuck with [[DamselScrappy Ka]][[FateWorseThanDeath te]].

* This sort-of happens in ''Series/RobinHood''. Both Robin Hood and Marian end up ''dead'', but they are given a TogetherInDeath scene that suggests that they have an eternity in Heaven to share. Everyone else? Dead, forgotten, gone, alone, or stuck with [[DamselScrappy Ka]][[FateWorseThanDeath te]].

* Seemingly ((InvertedTrope Inverted]] in ''FinalFantasyCrystalChroniclesRingOfFates'' where the Twins Yuri and Chelinka change the world to one where the BigBad is in a GroundHogDayLoop repating a few seconds over... and again. They find that their friends are all living happily ever after, but don't remember them at all. Then they go home, when Yuri becomes terminally ill, Chelinka uses her last power to save him, giving her own life in the process, despite Yuri's plead for her to save it for herself, leaving him alone. However! Chelinka had prepared a special spell beforehand, that activates the next day when Yuri contemplates his own loneliness, somehow the past and future coincides, and a young Chelinka with two crystals, let's Yuri make the wish to make everything good. Resulting in a perfect world where they are kids again, both their parents are still alive, their friends know them and live with them happily, the King's daughter is still alive, the King is released from being the same no matter what the world, and the moon was never red, and hence never evil. ZigZaggedTrope for the win!
** Note that it's implied that the multiplayer mode, is the alternate world created by the ending, wherein the Big Bad is still loose, and the king seems rather senile, and eventually a rather young girl is in charge of the kingdom.. so YourMileageMayVary on how good the ending really is.

* In the "Principal And The Pauper" episode of ''TheSimpsons'', it is revealed that the man calling himself Principal Skinner has actually been impersonating the real Seymour Skinner for years. When the real Skinner shows up, everything is thrown into chaos. The solution to this problem? Run the real Skinner out of town on a rail (literally) and legally mandate that everyone [[SnapBack pretend the events of the episode never happened]] [[ThereIsNoHigherCourt "under penalty of torture."]]

* In ''HellboyII: The Golden Army'', the movie ends with Liz and Hellboy planning on their future together with their children. Abe Sapien, on the other hand, get's to mourn the death of his lost love, Princess Nuala, who [[HeroicSacrifice killed herself]] to stop her brother from destroying the human world.

* The final episode of ''TransformersAnimated'': Even though Megatron, Shockwave and Lugnut are all successfully captured by the Autobots (and Starscream killed off), one of the Autobots, Prowl is already dead, Blackarachnia and Waspinator are both stranded in an unknown jungle, Soundwave's "brain" is flown away by Laserbeak and is never heard of again, and that Lockdown, Slipstream, Thundercracker, Skywarp, Swindle, and Team Chaar are all still st large.

* Completely averted in ''RoseOfVersailles'', where the leads get the worst endings and the only character to see a happy end is minor character Rosalie.

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* This sort-of happens in ''Series/RobinHood''. Both Robin Hood and Marian end up ''dead'', but they are given a TogetherInDeath scene that suggests that they have an eternity in Heaven to share. Everyone else? Dead, forgotten, gone, alone, or stuck with [[DamselScrappy Ka]][[FateWorseThanDeath te]].

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* The final episode of ''TransformersAnimated'': Even though Megatron, Shockwave and Lugnut are all successfully captured by the Autobots (and Starscream killed off), one of the Autobots, Prowl is already dead, Blackarachnia and Waspinator are both stranded in an unknown jungle, Soundwave's "brain" is flown away by Laserbeak and is never heard of again, and that Lockdown, Slipstream, Thundercracker, Skywarp, Swindle, and Team Chaar are all still st large.
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* ''SailorMoon'', mainly in the manga. Usagi and Mamoru get to get married and have a child and rule the world together in bliss, aside from the occasional alien attack. The other Senshi get to spend their lives in servitude to them and cannot have relationships of their own.

* This sort-of happens in ''Series/RobinHood''. Both Robin Hood and Marian end up ''dead'', but they are given a TogetherInDeath scene that suggests that they have an eternity in Heaven to share. Everyone else? Dead, forgotten, gone, alone, or stuck with [[DamselScrappy Kate]].

* The best ending of ''ValkyrieProfileCovenantOfThePlume'' has Wylfred finally find peace, his mother regain her sanity, and Tilte learning about Ancel's death and being able to grieve him properly instead of just sensing that somethings plain wrong. [[LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters The rest of the cast]] however, don't get featured at all in the ending and most of the characters that don't you meet but don't recruit [[Strike:on the A path]] get rather depressing ends. It doesn't help that the two other endings are {{Downer Ending}}s.

* INVERTED in ''CodeGeass'', where [[TheHeroDies Lelouch dies]] and Suzaku [[FakingTheDead fakes his death]] and forever takes on the identity of Zero, while the surviving main characters move on with their lives and attend Ohgi and Villetta's wedding.

* ''FushigiYuugi''. Yeah, [[OfficialCouple Miaka and Tamahome]] get their happy ending... Too bad the other Guardians of Suzaku are either trapped in a book or ''dead'' (and Miaka, at one point of the story, actually had the power to bring every one of them back to life and/or in the real world. But [[TheScrappy she]] [[WhatTheHellHero resurrected only the guy she loves]]. Talking about double standards...).

* ''FushigiYuugi''. Yeah, [[OfficialCouple Miaka and Tamahome]] get their happy ending... Too bad the other Guardians of Suzaku are either trapped in a book or ''dead'' (and Miaka, at one point of the story, actually had the power to bring every one of them back to life and/or in the real world. But [[TheScrappy she]] [[WhatTheHellHero resurrects only the guy she loves]]. Talking about double standards...).

* ''FushigiYuugi''. Yeah, Miaka and Tamahome gains their happy ending... Too bad the other Guardians of Suzaku are either trapped in a book or ''dead'' (and Miaka, at one point of the story, actually had the power to bring every one of them back to life and/or in the real world. But [[TheScrappy she]] [[WhatTheHellHero resurrects only the guy she loves]]. Talking about double standards...).

* INVERTED in ''CodeGeass'', where [[TheHeroDies Lelouch dies]] and Suzaku [[FakingTheDead fakes his death]] and forever takes on the identity of Zero, while the surviving main characters move on with their lives and attend Ohgi and Viletta's wedding.

Related to ProtagonistCenteredMorality and InferredHolocaust. If an AdamAndEve plot is both apocalyptic and presented as having an upbeat ending, it's also this.