Misused: Esoteric Happy Ending

Note: This thread was proposed by DoomTay.

Here is a wick check being performed for Esoteric Happy Ending

Why? This trope is for when an ending is meant to come across as happy, but doesn't usually due to problems that end up unaddressed. There is also some moderate conflation with Bittersweet Ending

• Awesome.Measure For Measure: This one is for Shakespeare himself. So, we have this well-known story that's been adapted several times already about a woman who agrees to a Scarpia Ultimatum to save her brother, but the villain kills him anyway, and the king's idea of justice is to force the villain to marry the heroine before executing him, but the heroine automatically falls in love with her rapist and her brother's killer for no other reason than that he's now her husband and successfully pleads for his life (even the adapters who reveal that the brother is actually alive never do so until after this), and this is treated as a happy ending. When Shakespeare adapts the story, he changes all of this; his Isabella may successfully suggest clemency for Angelo, but she refuses to sleep with him, and she certainly doesn't fall in love with him or marry him. Truly awesome adaptation, Will!
• Funny.Retsufrash Slowbeef And Diabetus: Mike: Now they have found the happiness forever.
• YMMV.Ben 10 Omniverse: The Incursean Story Arc is concluded in "The Frogs of War, Part 2" where it turns out all that happened was a Batman Gambit by Princess Attea all along to overthrow her father Emperor Milleus. By the end of the episode, she agrees to leave Earth with the Incursean Empire in exchange for the Plumbers keeping her daddy in custody, which is presented as an acceptable, if not entirely happy, ending. The thing is, in previous episodes, it had been clearly established that Attea was much worse than her father, being an Ax-Crazy Psychopathic Manchild motivated by Rape, Pillage, and Burn whereas her father was a more pragmatic Galactic Conqueror. In fact, she almost blew up Earth For the Evulz in her introduction episode (in contrast to her father, who only threatened to do so if she wasn't returned to him). Now, granted, she is sort of in a Dating Catwoman situation with Ben, so she will most likely avoid attacking Earth again, but that's little consolation to the rest of the galaxy.
• YMMV.Childhoods End: The Overlords think it's a happy ending, the idea that the children of the final generation of humans Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence, but it still involves the extinction of humanity, and the "ascended" children are a bunch of feral psychic monsters that get assimilated into a Hive Mind. Not to mention the Overmind has done this to possibly hundreds of sentient races, and only the Overlords say this is a good thing. If a different science fiction work kept the same basic plot and cast the aliens as villains, most people wouldn't question their action as villainous.
• YMMV.City Hall: Part of the reason why the movie received mixed reviews from the critics (see So Okay, It's Average below) - after Calhoun finds his boss, the mayor, whom he looked up to, was the one who made the call to Judge Stern to get the drug dealing son of mafia boss Paul Zapatti probation instead of jail, which ended up getting a detective and a six-year-old African-American boy killed, not to mention the ones killed to cover up that fact, he tells the mayor he has to resign in an appropriately somber scene - but at the end, Calhoun is running for city council, he's optimistic, and he flirts again with Cogan. It could have been a case of Life Goes On, but it seems jarring instead.
• YMMV.Five Centimeters Per Second: The director claims that the ending is supposed to be uplifting, because Takaki smiles as he walks away in the last scene, indicating that he has moved on. But most viewers see it as a Downer Ending because he Did Not Get the Girl.
• YMMV.Granblue Fantasy: A number of events have this.
  • Most notably is "Together In Song", where it's clear the village didn't learn anything as seen by Arte's paintings still being monsters by the time he was defeated.
  • The end of "What Makes The Sky Blue: 000". Lucillius’ plan is foiled, he and Belial get sucked into another dimension by Lucio where they can’t torment the crew anymore, Sandalphon and Lucifer concile and share their feelings with one another, Sariel, Israfel and Azreal are saved and all the Primarchs can live a normal life after ceding their roles to nature. Everyone except Lucifer, who is still dead and trapped, alone in the afterlife away from any contact with another person, if his conversation with Sandalphon is any indication. He reconciles with Sandalphon who initially wanted to stay with him but willed himself to stay with the crew, where he is needed, leaving Lucifer alone until Sandalphon dies, if he ever dies. His monologue after Sandalphon leaves him details how lonely he feels, finally being able to understand how Sandalphon felt. The entire scene is a huge Tear Jerker and Player Punch post realization where everyone gets a happy ending except him, a genuinely good person who has to spend presumably eternity alone with only a notion that Sandalphon might return to him one day. And unlike Sandalphon, his chances of ever coming back are slim since he no longer has a body to return to, it having been sucked into another dimension with Lucillius.
• YMMV.Library War: The MBA was amended to disarm the MBA in the end, but the LDF also disarmed itself. The watered down MBA is still around, meaning censorship in Japan will continue unless another prime minister decides to take it down.
• YMMV.Plague Inc: There's no denying the fact that beating "Santa's Little Helper" is done by brainwashing everyone into cheering up. Whether or not the happiness-free dystopia that existed prior made this welcome depends on who you ask.
• YMMV.The Great Phantom Peril: At the end, Mr. Porter, who remains fooled by Faora's lies, requests to be sent into the Zone with his "wife". And instead of discouraging him and getting him help, Superman, Batman and Supergirl agree. The latter even says maybe it is the best for him.
• YMMV.The Guided Fate Paradox: While it's great that Cinderella and the Prince realize how important they are to each other and their readers, it still doesn't change the fact that she'll still constantly suffer at the hands of her step family every time the story begins.
• YMMV.The Maw: The game plays the ending off as Bittersweet: the parting of two unusual friends. In reality the Maw is now devouring entire planets and still growing. This implication is later confirmed in the Twisted Pixel universe as scientists in Comic Jumper have noticed solar systems disappearing with only a strange purple substance left behind. Of course, given Twisted Pixel's morbid sense of humour, this was all very much intentional.
• YMMV.The Twilight Zone 2002: "The Executions Of Grady Finch" ends with the killer dying after being crushed underneath a statue. Great, except everybody is convinced he's innocent except the lawyer he confessed to, so now they'll go on a wild goose chase for the killer. And the victim's son who tried to shoot him for getting away with it never got any closure in hearing Grady finally confess and got arrested for attempted murder.
• YMMV.Wonderful Everyday Down The Rabbit Hole: In the Wonderful Everyday end of Jabberwocky II Tomosane and Hasaki are living together in peace, yay! But that doesn't change the fact that Kimika and a massive number of people died jumping off the building under Takuji's orders.
  • In the Hill of Sunflowers ending Yuki is...somehow with Tomosane and Hasaki, though neither know for how long. This can be seen as either heartwarming or unsettling, as even Hasaki can see her now. aside from that the ending suffers from a lot of the same issue the Wonderful Everyday ending has.
  • And then there's End Sky II Implying none of this may have happened at all...
  • The Knockin' on Heaven's Door epilogue ends with Tomosane and Yuki becoming a couple. Only that it's unknown if this Yuki is Tomosane's split personality or the real Yuki, now a ghost. Either way, Tomosane clearly hasn't moved on from her death.
• YMMV.Ys The Oath In Felghana: In the original Ys III: Wanderers from Ys, Count McGuire was a Karma Houdini even though he's partially responsible for Galbalan's resurrection (and a few other terrible actions of his own), and still gets to reign Felghana in the ending. All players have is a vague promise from him that he'll be a better person - are we supposed to rest assured upon hearing that? The Oath in Felghana Video Game Remake rectifies this by having him show a more sympathetic side and giving him a back-story that many of the atrocities done under his name weren't really intentional.
• YMMV.Bloodstorm: Yeah, Razor destroys Cyberia and unites the other provinces...but the world is left without any technology, and there's no signs that he's actually going to repair and unite the world like Tremor would. Was his victory really a good thing in hindsight?
• YMMV.Deracine: While all of the children at the boarding school are saved from the Evil Faerie (and you) and the game treats this as a happy and heartwarming ending, a lot of things are left unresolved as a result. Margareta was never released from her strange undeath, Rozsa was never saved from receiving a wound that won't heal, and the surrounding area is still plagued by evil faeries. The children never had the positive influence of the kind faerie in their life and now they will have no one to bail them out if they ever run into an evil faerie again, which is even likely since they also never learned of the evil faeries in the ending's timeline.
• YMMV.Supernatural: The series ends with Dean dying on a hunt, while Sam goes on to get married, have a son named Dean, and eventually die at an old age, at which point the two reunite in heaven. This is treated as a happy ending, yet it plays out like Sam and Dean doing nothing for decades but wait around for Sam to die: all the audience is shown is Dean driving around heaven by himself and Sam raising his son, with no suggestion that the two have any other relationships or even interests during this time. This also comes off as implying that the show's theme of "family don't end in blood" was a lie and none of Sam and Dean's non-blood relationships meant anything to them.
  • The decision to kill off Dean at all also falls under this trope. After fighting for years to finally achieve the free will he wanted, and after Castiel sacrificed his life and sentenced himself to an eternity of damnation to keep him alive, giving him an entire speech about his intent to let him discover that new purpose, Dean dies before he gets a chance to do anything with it. He then ends up in Heaven, a place that he was previously shown to have decidedly mixed feelings about, right next door to his parents, with whom he has a difficult relationship. Some fans also felt that treating Dean's death and ascent to heaven as a happy ending sent the Accidental Aesop that "some people are too broken to ever find peace in life."
  • Despite the ending having Bobby explain how Jack fixed Heaven, people have taken issue with the fact he didn't do the same to the Earth. Not only did he do nothing to save Dean, but with all his power he could have easily cured all the monsters so that Sam and Dean wouldn't have needed to hunt anymore. Since he didn't, that means he has done nothing to make humanity safe and instead allows monsters to carry on like they did when Chuck was in charge. Plus characters like Garth won't go to Heaven to be reunited with the Winchesters and instead will end up in Purgatory where they will be hunted for eternity.

• Literature.The Bazaar Of Bad Dreams: In-universe in “Premium Harmony” – sure, Ray’s wife and dog are dead, but now he can smoke as much as he wants. And that’s all he really wants.
• Literature.The Last Unicorn: In-universe, the story of Nikos and the unicorn he saved by turning him human. The unicorn considers it a horrifying Fate Worse than Death.
• WesternAnimation.Monsters Inc: Discussed In-Universe. Mike mentions that even though he and Sulley saved Boo, they destroyed the company, put their fellow employees out of a job, and doomed Monstropolis to a powerless fate. Or at least, they would have, if he didn't give Sulley the idea to switch to laugh power. Sort of a mix between this and possible misuse

• EverybodyDiesEnding.Literature: In Sonya Hartnett's The Midnight Zoo it is heavily implied that the three Rom Children and all the zoo animals are dead at the end of the book. Similar to The Last Battle it seems to be a happy ending with the children and animals reaching Heaven Or...Some kind of afterlife...This is supposedly a very hopeful uplifting ending...Maybe... Pothole
• Funny.Phelous 2016 Episodes: Pocahontas says that one day there will be peace between the peoples. Phelous!Pocahontas interrupts to throw the "Blood Bush" on board the departing ship, killing all the Europeans. Given the inevitable undoing of the Dingo Picture's ending, it can actually be argued that Phelous made the ending happier by including a bloodbath.
• MisaimedFandom.Anime And Manga: Regarding the movie, many fans support Homura's actions in the ending, namely, usurping Madoka, becoming a devil, and enslaving the entire Incubator species, particularly among those who argued that the original series' ending wasn't all that happy upon closer inspection, despite the fact that Homura herself calls those acts evil. Perhaps some good came of her decision, but it's a stretch to call it a good decision.
• Narm.Sonic The Hedgehog: Fastest Thing Alive: THE CITY'S BEEN FUCKING DESTROYED!!!!
• YMMV.David Fincher: While not as extreme as some others, the characters in his movies tend to suffer, a lot. And, with one exception, all of his movies are very esteemed by critics.

• Fanfic.Infinity Train Branching Paths: Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • In a positive twist of this, Ash does this gradually during Ash V: At first by staying out of the lab itself to avoid the toxicity and the blame game (which also has Parker and Goh blaming him for what happened). After Parker accuses him of being a black hole, gets on his case for helping another girl, and then attempts to assault said girl (Maple), he flat out quits working at the lab and goes back to traveling the world. Then again, things quickly go to hell in Vermillion when Lady Destiny shows up... Questionable use
• NightmareFuel.Tiny Toon Adventures: "Duck Dodgers Jr." features the eponymous duck and Duck Dodgers attempting to stop Marvin the Martian using a giant-vacuum-cleaner-like machine to suck up planets and turn them into toy blocks for his daughter Marcia. The senior Dodgers' attempts to foil Marvin cause both of them to be sucked up by the machine, which then runs out of control, sucking up the entire universe, including the guy animating the episode. All that's left is Marcia and Jr. in a white void, but they have lots of new blocks to play with.
• TearJerker.Wolf Guy Wolfen Crest: That damn Esoteric Happy Ending. It's sad... but it's oddly happy too.
• VideoGame.The Way RPG Maker: Gainax Ending: All three of them. Some might qualify for Esoteric Happy Ending, but don't expect sunshine and rainbows in any event.
• YMMV.How To Date A Magical Girl: The happy ending of this game is apparently staying with your girlfriend, but doing so means staying in the simulation and letting your physical body waste away. By contrast, choosing to stay with 54T0M1 aka Satomi (the mystery ending) actually brings out the best possible ending: she's touched by your love for her and decides to keep you sleeping in order to devote herself to you as well. While your time with her gets cut short when the medical team removes her AI chip from your brain, you make a full recovery and Satomi doesn't hijack your body. Not sure about this one
• YMMV.The Day The Earth Stood Still 2008: Klaatu agrees to spare the Earth and humanity, but only after he generates an EMP so powerful that it stops all technology on Earth (e.g. electricity, gas, coal, etc.). Given how technologically-dependent our whole society has become, it's guaranteed mankind will plunge into a very dark age. While the entire world population won't be eliminated, around half of it is doomed to die to starvation and conflict, as modern agriculture and trade is heavily dependent on technology. Borders on "after the movie"
• YMMV.Wolf Guy Wolfen Crest: Aoshika is in Alaska, hanging with the wolves and other wolf men. Inugami wakes up in a research lab, his body still maimed from his encounter with Haguro. Somehow, their spirits end together.
  • It's also (seemingly) implied that Inugami's sheer force of will is going to help him escape the research lab, and that it is his "destiny" to reunite with Aoshika.
  • All of this is not even getting to the fact that literally everyone who had ever been involved with Inugami, from Aoshika, to Ryuuko, to all of Inugami's student friends, to Aoshika's fellow teachers, end the manga worse off than they were before, with physical, mental, emotional and psychological scars that will follow them forever, with Ryuuko in particular having apparently gone murderously insane. Only Aoshika has any chance at happiness, and that's assuming Inugami reaches her. First two seem questionable, third very much fits
• Mooks.Literature: "Mercenary Song", a poem by Hungarian author Gyorgy Faludi, tells the everyday lives of mooks from their perspective. It involves the titular mercenaries proudly bragging about every single atrocity they committed, including breaking into people's houses, eating all their food, raping their wives, selling their daughter, and clubbing them to death if they don't say 'thank you', killing their own parents, cutting down all the trees, poisoning all the wells, just because they enjoy it, and specifically stating that they serve whoever pays them the most, quite possibly making them even more evil than their employer. The poem ends with them growing old and senile, living as beggars for the rest of their lives, barely surviving and only thanks to the mercy and goodwill of the very same people they loved to abuse so much. Sounds more like a karmic end. Are we sure this is meant to be happy?
• YMMV.Trucks: Inverted. The short story ends with the narrator thinking to himself about the Fridge Horror of his situation—now that the trucks have forced humans to refuel them, they can also force humans to make more trucks and help them take over the world. But the story ends before we find out if that actually happens.

• YMMV.Ferris Buellers Day Off: Cameron is last seen resolving to have it out with his domineering and emotionally distant father for the first time in his life after accidentally destroying the latter's priceless Ferrari. This moment marks the final step in his Character Development, but it doesn't change the fact that the Ferrari is beyond saving, and the elder Frye, who prioritizes his material wealth (especially the Ferrari) over everyone and everything else, will be home shortly. And if Cameron was as deathly afraid of his father as he said he was before, one can safely say that his father has given him damn good reason to be. So, despite his newfound strength and confidence, the ensuing confrontation probably didn't go over very well. Seems to be more about what happens after the movie
• YMMV.The Grinning Snake: While Konoka does have some inkling of what she's sacrificed in the name of revenge, it's quite likely that she'll end up regretting it and having to live with what she's done. Post-work speculation

• YMMV.OKKO Lets Be Heroes S 1 E 33 The Power Is Yours: Not that the ending is meant to be super happy, but the Planeteer Alert worked far better in the nineties when there seemed the possibility of stopping climate change, as opposed to now where consensus is that climate change is irreversible and the best we can do is adapt and mitigate the effects. Doesn't the first sentence sort of admit this doesn't fit?
• YMMV.The Pirate Queen: Yeah, Ireland's under English control now, the Gaelic way of life is about to be destroyed, and the power of the chieftains has been broken, but hey! Grace and Tiernan are married, and they hope that Ireland will "one day" be free. Sounds more like Only the Leads Get a Happy Ending
• YMMV.The Red Shoes: OK, so Karen has found peace and joy at the end. But she has to endure ridiculous trials and die first, all over a moment of envy for a pretty pair of shoes? It's hard to overlook the Values Dissonance to see what would have made Andersen (and his audience) consider this a happy story. Does it count if Values Dissonance is at play?

• BittersweetEnding.Live Action Films: 50 First Dates. Henry does get the girl, and the two sail off to Alaska, married and soon to be parents, but Lucy never does regain her short-term memory, and has to make do with receiving a video recap of everything that has happened since the accident when she wakes up each morning. It's an Esoteric Happy Ending. So is it bittersweet or esoteric?
• YMMV.Star Vs The Forces Of Evil S 4 E 37 Cleaved: Of a sort. Star manages to destroy magic, stop Mina, save Tom, get together with Marco, and unite Earth and Mewni into one amalgam dimension. Happy ending, right? Not quite. What Star did ultimately killed all the inhabitants of the Magic Dimension as well as any being dependent on magic to survive (Omnitraxus and Rhombulus's lifeless bodies being shown, the deaths of the millhorses being shown in detail, and Hekapoo, Reynaldo, and Glossaryck are all implied to have died in the process). The two dimensions may be united, but it's caused a large amount of Culture Shock for both Earth and Mewni, the humans shown reacting in fear to the other dimensional beings, and the people of Mewni like Rich Pigeon adapting poorly to Earth elements. Mina, meanwhile, is both alive and still out there. As she herself declares, so long as there are people with similar ideas to hers, she will never really lose. Echo Creek is still in a panic from the resulting backlash of the Magic Dimension's destruction, the people of Mewni are in disarray from Mina's assault, and magic is ultimately gone for good. Also, there are those like Toffee who will never accept peace with the Mewmans and now have the perfect opportunity to get their revenge (this includes Toffee's ruler Seth, an ageless immortal who is heavily implied to have been the Greater-Scope Villain and unless Moon killed him with the Darkest spell, is still around, and his species are only vulnerable to magic and otherwise nigh-impossible to kill). While the series tries to end on a happy note, it gets marred by all the problems it created in the process, made even worse thanks to Fridge Horror. Similar things are brought up as a Bittersweet Ending under Recap.Star Vs The Forces Of Evil S 4 E 37 Cleaved
• TearJerker.Fire Emblem Three Houses: Even if Claude survives this route his story still ends on on a somber note: He does say he has ordered his remaining forces to stand down and work with Edelgard, But that's not entirely seen. His classmates may have died on Gronder Field. His closest friend, Hilda, can die (there was a programmed ending for her on Crimson Flower, but it was removed). One of the few Alliance lords he trusted, Judith, died trying to protect him. So while he may be escaping to Almyra with his life, he is doing so after unintentionally leaving his friends and comerades behind. And while he parts with Edelgard and Byleth on amicable terms, you may then remember that Claude has been described as hiding his true emotions behind a smile. Hopefully he was actually genuine here. Sounds more bittersweet, albeit more bitter than sweet
• YMMV.Black Christmas 2019: In the end, it's unlikely that anyone would believe what really happened to the sorority sisters. Not only do the police and school faculty have an established pattern of not believing women, explaining all the nonsensical black magic that led to the deaths of a bunch of male students would likely be a problem, not to mention the fact that there were probably some innocents burned to death. The sudden change in Riley's expression from triumphant to dismayed in the last second of the film seems to convey that she's just realized how much shit she's still in. The police and possible innocents bits were also brought up under Bittersweet Ending
• YMMV.Robo Cop 3: Along with Inferred Holocaust mentioned below. Child Prodigy Nikko had helped RoboCop and the resistance defeat McDaggett and the Rehabs, but her parents were killed trying to flee from OCP camps at the beginning of the film, thus she's now an orphan. Sounds more bittersweet
• YMMV.The Haunting Of Hill House: Hill House in a sense wins and continues to exist after it has collected so many souls to keep in its grounds and now has taken Hugh Crain alongside Nell and Olivia. And yet we're suppose to be okay that Steve cannot breathe a word of this? While the Crains have reunited and are a family again by the end of it, the House still lingers within the forests, waiting for more victims to take. Poor Nell also presumably has to spend eternity without her husband or her beloved siblings. Partially mentioned under Bittersweet Ending
• YMMV.The Proud Family: "The Legend of Johnny Lovely". An actual boy named Johnny Lovely is suspended from school after dancing with Penny. She then leads a wild goose chase in search of him that ends at the intersection of Johnny Avenue and Lovely Lane. Penny then concludes that Johnny is just a legend and that he may be out there somewhere.
• YMMV.Turovero The Celestial Tower: The four heroes have been Dead All Along, but, after finally accepting their deaths and overcoming most of their issues, they're able to ascend to Heaven. Except the Dark One, who will only be able to join them once they, too, have overcome their inner demons. This has also been put under Bittersweet Ending on the main page
• YMMV.Genma Wars: The series ends on a supposedly uplifting note with the Genma being wiped out and mankind left to eventually rebuild itself according to the narrator. With that said however, the twins have utterly failed to prevent modern society's downfall and prevent their timeline from coming to place, not to mention most named characters in the show have been killed. Even the Big Bad's survival is ambiguous at really best.

• Fanfic.Entering The Love Hina World
• Funny.Robot Chicken: The ending of The Little Match Girl sketch, though it's pretty awesome, too; unlike the original story's Esoteric Happy Ending where the main character freezes to death but goes to Heaven, here, she murders her father (voiced by Rob Paulsen's signature growl) by setting him on fire with the matches he made her sell. As this happens, he admits that her learning to use the matches for her own purposes is something he didn't consider.
• Pantheon.Endings: Hodaka Morishima and Hina Amano, Co-Deities of "Supposed" Happy Endings (Hina: 100% Sunshine Girl)