Multiple Endings

"Good Ending" redirects here. If you were looking for the manga series commonly known by that name, you'll find it under GE - Good Ending.

"That's how it could've happened... But how about this?"
—Clue

One of the ways video games increase Replay Value, especially role playing games, Survival Horror, and dating sims. Different strategies or levels of skill in play will result in different endings, rather than all leading to a single predetermined conclusion. Generally, multiple playthroughs are necessary to see all the content, and possibly to unravel certain mysteries. What determines the ending usually involves the choices the game gives in the prompt, whether one completes the 100% Completion, other character's Relationship Values towards you, and/or how high the player got the Karma Meter. Sometimes there are dual-optimal endings depending on which side they chose to be on. (These can include the Forces of Evil!) The most diverse examples are found in Dating Sims, including but not limited to:

  • The True End, the primary plot ending of a game that has multiple endings. In many Dating Sims, this ending may not be achievable if other endings are not achieved yet. It basically forces the player to finish the game with the "Good End", in order to unlock the path of the true story. When it is still locked, trying to get the "True End" usually results in the "Standard End" or "Bad End" below. The "True End" usually reveals most if not everything that happened in the other storylines, while some events remain mysterious even when "Good End" is achieved.
  • The Good End, one or more character-specific endings on a positive note. Sometimes referred to as the Golden Ending (especially if the lesser options simply aren't that good). In dating sims, this is usually the one where the player character gets laid.
  • The Standard End, which usually involves the least effort by the player. This is usually very short or unfulfilling, such as a blank staff roll, if the game is trying to push 100% Completion on you.
  • The Good+/Best End, where all the available content is opened up or shown.
  • The variably-used Poor End, when the player makes an immediately quick, game-ending decision, making this ending effectively a Nonstandard Game Over.
  • The longer and genuinely Bad End, where the more devoted but failed gamer is rewarded with a more prolonged, depressive, or outright disturbing endings. See It's a Wonderful Failure. The phrase BAD END itself is an Iris Out-type meme, well-recognized in modern parody. Bad Ends are, paradoxically, sought out in certain dodgier videogames.
  • The Joke End perhaps the rarest of all, some games contain joke endings which are usually the most difficult to obtain, generally requiring the player to use some MacGuffin or play in a totally nonstandard way.

A variant is "segmented endings": You always get the same ending, but depending on your performance you gain additional scenes that further conclude the plot or add new twists; this is often seen with New Game+ so that players can use the same characters for all the endings. Some designers include truly "neutral" multiple ends, letting the player decide whether they're good or bad.

The major problem with Multiple Endings is that the sequel, should the developers decide to make one, obviously has to pick only one ending from which to continue the story -- probably one of the good ones. This invariably occurs in adaptations to other media, such as novels, comics and television. Video games have the technical means to solve said problem with an Old Save Bonus, wherein the previous game's conclusion becomes the player's personal canon in the sequel. The other problem is that thanks to YouTube uploads, being able to view multiple endings no longer requires you to replay an entire game (perhaps in response to this, many games now have in-game rewards for getting different endings).

Occasionally, the Multiple Endings are also couched with a non-linear plot—in which case, it can become frustrating-verging-on-impossible to find any of the multiple endings, especially if there are multiple "threads" in the plot.

Multiple Endings are an effective way to avert Unstable Equilibrium. Instead of rewarding highly-skilled players with more power, reward them with less power, but give them a better ending if they can succeed.

As an Ending Trope, Spoilers ahead may be unmarked. Beware.

Examples of Multiple Endings include:

Video Game Examples

Video Games: Action

  • Possibly the oldest example is Bubble Bobble, which had three different endings—the BAD END obtained by beating the final boss Super Drunk with only one player alive (this boots you back 25 levels on Normal and 50 levels (HALFWAY!) on Super Mode), the Good End obtained by beating the boss with two players alive, and the Happy Ending obtained by beating the boss with two players alive in Super Mode—which has to be enabled before starting the game with a code you get from the Good End. This was taken literally in a sequel, Bubble Symphony, where the players can go to multiple worlds and see a bad ending exclusive to that world if they don't get the stuff they need. With successive games though, the idea of requiring two players sticking together to the end has been dropped, but in two sequels, there is a Super Mode to play.
  • In pretty much any Sonic the Hedgehog game where collecting the Chaos Emeralds is optional, if you beat the game without collecting all the Emeralds, then you're treated to a post-credits scene with Robotnik in possession of the Emeralds, laughing to himself. Beating the game with all the Emeralds gives a more cheerful scene.
    • A nasty example of this is Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (8-bit version). If Sonic does not collect all of the Chaos Emeralds, than Eggman/Robotnik escapes, and the ending implies that Tails was killed.
  • Shadow the Hedgehog has ten different endings (some of them more different than others) and a helpful in-game diagram that shows how to reach them. Finding all ten of them unlocks the now-traditional "Last Story", an extra level and an extra boss that lead to an eleventh ending. While the Last Story area takes place in the area of the "hero" endings, after you've collected all the Chaos Emeralds, none of them quite match up with the situation at the beginning of the Last Story.
  • In Contra: Hard Corps for the Sega Genesis, there are four different paths, each with its own ending. The player must choose between two branching paths at the end of the first stage. The two paths converge to a set of common stages until the player is forced to choose between another pair of branching paths during the fifth stage. The path the player took earlier, along with the path he takes afterward, will determine the final set of stages. There's also a fifth ending if the player completes the secret coliseum stage, as well as a sixth ending in which the player joins Colonel Bahamut's army (although the game counts this as a Nonstandard Game Over).
    • Both Contra: Shattered Soldier and Neo Contra have a Bad Ending where the enemy base is destroyed with the heroes still inside, as well as a segmented Good Ending in which the full version can only be seen by maintaining an S rank thorough the game and defeating the True Final Boss.
    • Contra 4 has a different ending for each difficulty setting. Easy mode only takes you to Stage 7, giving you an Easy Mode Mockery. The ending on Hard shows a different artwork, along with a different ending message, than if you beat it on Normal.
  • Donkey Kong 64 has a Segmented Ending in that, if you collect less than 100%, you just get the credits with a bit of aftermath behind it. If you collect 100%, you get to watch the credits, and K. Lumsy swimming with the Kongs on his stomach and chest. If you get 101%, however, you get the credits, K. Lumsy's swim, and fake Hilarious Outtakes.
  • The PC game Mechwarrior 4: Vengeance had two possible endings. There were two second to last missions. In one, you make a raid on an enemy storehouse. The second option is to launch an assault to save the player character's sister from an enemy attack. The first option will result in having the most powerful mech in the game for the most difficult mission, but will result in one of your better NPC pilots going rogue to attempt to save the sister. After completing that mission, your trusted mechanic adviser chews you out for leaving your sister to die and leaves your employ. This results in a final cutscene in which the sister, mechanic, and rogue pilot are all absent. In this ending, you become a hardened and almost despondent Duke. The second mission will result in your character not having access to the most powerful machine, but it is the "good" ending where you have kept all of your pilots and allies. In this ending, your sister becomes Duchess, and you decide to go become a mercenary lance, which suits your temperament better. Both endings result in you winning the game, leaving it up to player preference.
    • Interestingly, the expansion, Black Knight, assumes the "Bad" ending happened, as you play as a member of a mercenary outfit hired to kill the very character you played in Mechwarrior 4, who has become a tyrant.
    • The other expansion, Mercenaries, had three endings. If you sided with the pro-Victor faction, you became the guard unit for the new Lyran Archon. If you threw in with the (eventually defeated) pro-Katherine faction, you could go rogue and become a leading player in the Chaos Marsh. Alternatively, you could join Clan Wolf by fighting a Trial of Position and go on to rescue Katherine.
  • Mega Man X 4 had two different endings depending on which player character was used. Both X5 and X6 had three different endings that depended on chance. Whether Zero turns Maverick or not, which also dictates if you can still play as him, is random, though completing various objectives tips the odds in your favor.
  • The Famicom version of Karnov has three endings, all of which are "good."
  • Wario Land II has several different gameplay paths that branch out and intersect, and several different endings to go with them. Most of the endings come down to a variation of the same thing, though.
    • Its predecessor also has multiple endings, depending on how many coins and treasures were collected at the end of the game.
    • In Wario World, the way the Spritelings restore Wario's castle at the end depends on how many the player rescued. You could either receive a tent, a wooden fortress, an empty stone castle, a slightly less empty turquoise castle, a gold castle, and another gold castle filled with riches.
  • In the Sega CD and PC versions of the original Earthworm Jim, if you beat the game on the easiest setting, you would get an increasingly screwed up lesson on worms (the PC version at least has the background from the real ending during this). Conversely, beating the game on the highest difficulty yields you praise before moving on to the normal ending.
  • In Kid Kool and the Quest for the Seven Wonder Herbs, the player has a total three days (each day represented by one hour real time) to collect seven magic herbs to save the dying king from his terminal illness. The quicker the game is completed, the better the ending:
    • The best ending, if the player completes the game within one hour and a half: the King lives and Kid Kool is rewarded with a box of jewels and the King's daughter.
    • If the game is finished anywhere from one hour and a half to two hours, the King lives and Kid Kool is rewarded with a box of jewels.
    • If the game is finished between two hours and three hours, the King lives and Kid Kool is rewarded with money.
    • If the game is finished after three hours it gives the bad ending: the King dies and Kid Kool gets nothing.
  • In the Sega Genesis version of Beavis and Butthead, you can get the normal ending (where the two end up attending a concert featuring the band GWAR), however, if you've collected the cat, the scissors, and strips of leather, you can go backstage and Beavis and Butt-Head actually participate in the concert!
  • The uncut Ace Combat 3 Electrosphere is so far the only Ace Combat game with multiple endings: one for each major faction (UPEO, General Resource, Neucom, and Ouroboros) and one lone-wolf ending (technically, also Ouroboros).
  • Kirby 64 The Crystal Shards is notorious for 3 things: collecting items (the eponymous Shards and Enemy Info cards), three 4-player mini-games, and of course, cutscenes. The game has 2 endings that are unlocked depending on if you've collected all of the Shards or not. If you're 99% or under, Kirby and friends leave Ripple Star after defeating Miracle Matter and the final shot you see is a sinister look on the Queen's face. If you've collected all of the Shards, the restored crystal blasts the fairy queen with a light beam, expunging a cloud of Dark Matter from her that flies into space and creates the final world, Dark Star. Kirby and Ribbon must then fight 02 (which is quite difficult, since he is the real final boss). The real ending has Kirby and the others rewarded with crystal medals after defeating 02, and Ribbon kisses the little puffball, who proceeds to blush and trip down the stairs in a comical manner. Note that if you get all the Shards on your first try, the bad ending isn't Lost Forever in the cutscene menu if you didn't actually see it during normal gameplay; completing the game unlocks it in addition to the good one.
    • Kirby games are fond of this in general, stopping at the boss of the last area and giving a mildly cryptic ending unless you collected all of their respective plot coupons. Dream Land 2 and 3 both gave the player a rundown of all the enemies in the game before showing a question mark on Dark Matter.
  • In Gekisou Sentai Carranger: Zenkai! Racer Senshi, if the Rangers get 250 gears, RV Robo will be formed, and the good ending will be obtained (though it's rather perfunctory). Otherwise you get the "BAD END," where after the Final Boss the Bowzock run wild and cause an Earthshattering Kaboom.
  • The first Crash Bandicoot game features two endings - and interestingly, it's not actually clear which ending is the better one story-wise. The harder ending requires the player to collect all the gems, after which they can traverse The Great Hall and escape the islands with Tawna, followed by a humorous Where Are They Now? Epilogue. The other ending involves the player actually defeating Cortex.
  • The ending of Rock Man 4 Minus Infinity has several permutations depending on your actions:
    • If you rescue Rush during the final level, Mega Man will use Rush Cannon on Wily's space ship upon escaping the castle. Otherwise, Mega Man will collide with the space ship instead, destroying it regardless.
    • Eddie, Rush, and Beat make appearances depending on if you used the Recycle Inhaler on the former and/or rescued the other two during the final level.
    • If you turned Toad Man into a toad during the rematch and spared him, he will appear in the first part of the credits, hopping alongside the train.
    • If you get the ?Dagger, Shadow Man will be seen on his kite in the background in the first part of the credits.
    • Depending on what happened to Rush, Eddie, and Beat at the end of the game, they will appear either in color or grey in the "Presented by Capcom" screen.

Video Games: Action Adventure

  • Cave Story has an obvious, early bad ending, triggered if you accept a character's offer to run away rather than stay to fight the Big Bad. Defeating the Big Bad gives a rather bittersweet standard ending where the threat to the world is averted, but the floating island crashes, killing everyone who was still in it. But if you complete the sidequest to save Curly (whose requirements are hard to figure out without a guide and very easily Lost Forever), enter the Bonus Level of Hell and defeat the True Final Boss, then you get the good ending in which you save the island from crashing, and the Quirky Miniboss Squad finds redemption. Also, for both the standard and good endings, the credits (and the art that's displayed during them) vary depending on your in-game accomplishments. The bad ending gets no credits.
  • Though the basic 'ending' remains the same (most of human civilisation is destroyed, though some humans survive), Iji allows the player's actions to influence whether any Tasen survive, whether Dan dies, as well as defining aspects of the village shown in the ending credits.
  • Castlevania games have a long history of multiple endings.
    • In several games, an interesting variety is that the standard ending is the easiest one to get, the one that takes a bit of work is the Bad ending, and the best is the Golden Ending. Simon's Quest, Harmony of Dissonance, and the Sorrow series used this.
    • Others just have a bad ending and a good ending. Usually, trying to get the good ending opens up another boss battle, if not more areas to explore. Sometimes the bad ending cuts the game off halfway. The requirments can be not taking too long (Castlevania (Nintendo 64)//Legacy Of Darkness), getting all the Plot Coupons required (Order Of Ecclesia), or finding a certain item and using it at the right point. (Portrait Of Ruin and Symphony Of The Night).
      • Apparently, there was supposed to be another Bad End for Symphony, judging from some Dummied Out dialogue found by hacking the game, in which Maria would've been possessed by a Demon.
    • Bloodlines had two segmented endings, one for each character that got longer depending on difficulty.
    • Dracula's Curse has four different endings, depending on whether Trevor fought Dracula alone or with one of his three companions. The endings with Trevor's companions basically tells what happens to them after defeating Dracula. The credits sequence also changes after the second loop.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask had an egregiously segmented ending, where the finale Cutscene was split into a number of short clips, each of which was unlocked by the possession of an appropriate mask, so that the entire ending could only be seen if you'd collected all 20 masks. Failing to collect a specific mask would simply give you a picture of the mask you didn't get rather than the scene, as the scenes were usually tied to the things Link had to do in order to get them. Aside from this, the moon smashing into the world might be considered a Nonstandard Game Over.
    • Spirit Tracks also has three different endings, depending on Link's answer to Zelda's question about what he wants to become after the adventure, which the player had to chose before the final battle. Choosing "Warrior" gives the player a scene where Zelda watched Link training in the countyard (and apparently hurting himself in the process), "Train Engineer" causes a similar scene, where Zelda watched him driving by the Castle and pulling the steem whistle. When answered that he's not sure, Link apparently leaves Hyrule after the game, leaving Zelda behind with nothing but a picture showing the two of them on the Spirit Train.
  • 1213 has a standard ending, and a special ending. Both are similar in context, but the special ending really has to be seen to be believed.
  • The original Metroid is famous for its Reveal that Samus Is a Girl, in which she takes off more of her suit if you finish the game more quickly, and all the sequels continue the tradition, in one fashion or another.
  • The Metroid Prime games have segmented endings based on completion percentage. 100% Completion always unlocks the version with the Sequel Hook.
    • Hunters had a standard good and bad endings. You get the bad ending if you beat the final boss without shooting the symbols on the wall, and ending shows the area exploding with Samus stuck inside, then the words "The End?" appears after the credits. If you were able to figure out what the cryptic messages throughout the game meant and used it during the final boss fight, there would be a second part to the fight, and beating the boss there gets you the good ending where Samus escapes.
  • Cubivore gives you a bad ending if you don't have a large enough number of mutations by the end of your first time through the Chicky chapter.
  • Spider-Man: Web of Shadows has four possible endings based on your red suit-vs-black suit choices.
  • Phantom 2040 had over twenty endings, and while which one the player earned usually depended on obvious things like which option they took when given a story choice, there were a few cases of a determining factor being just which literal path they took to complete their objectives.


Video Games: Adventure

  • All the Princess Maker games, depending on what your daughter grows up to be, and who she marries.
  • Another very old ending comes from the Myst games. The first game offers the choice between freeing either Sirrus or Achenar from their books resulting in them trapping you instead, or touching the Green Book, which both claim is another trap, which gives you two more possible endings: either you have the white page and can let Atrus back into Myst, or you don't and you're stuck with him in D'ni. Riven and Exile carry this furthest; in Riven, you can trap yourself, release the villain in a variety of locations, be shot by the villain, destroy the universe without capturing the villain, destroy the universe without saving the Damsel in Distress... or capture the villain, evacuate the Damsel and her tribespeople, and destroy the universe. (And that's the good ending.) One of the bad endings of Riven is only accessible by beating most of the game, writing down the combination to a lock (randomly generated each game), and then going back to an earlier saved game. In Exile, there are at least five different ways for the villain to smash you with his hammer; the best ending cures the villain's psychosis and saves the MacGuffin without getting squashed. Revelation's finale confronts the player with Achenar and the abducted Yeesha, with only seconds to decide who to trust though even a casually-attentive player will have learned by this point that Sirrus was planning to possess Yeesha and that Achenar has undergone a thorough and complete Heel Face Turn; choosing incorrectly results in the player's immediate death, while choosing correctly sets off one final puzzle where the player must put Yeesha's memories in their proper order to exorcise Sirrus from her. Taking too long to choose also results in death. Finally, throughout the course of End of Ages, the player encounters the adult Yeesha and an old man named Esher, each of whom seek a mysterious tablet that only the player can obtain. Once the player does so, he can choose who to give it to; however, Yeesha has already tried and failed to obtain the tablet, meaning she can never touch it again, and Esher is actually a deranged maniac who will leave the player stranded on Myst Island while he goes off to conquer the universe. The right thing to do is to Take a Third Option by dropping the tablet, returning it to its rightful owners.
  • Sierra On-Line, in its middle years, frequently offered different endings based on the final decision the player made in the game. Some examples:
    • Gabriel Knight: The Sins of the Fathers allowed the player to choose whether to kill or save the villain, a woman Gabriel loved but who had been irreversibly possessed by an evil spirit. Interestingly, whatever the player chooses, the villain dies and Gabe receives a scar on his arm that is visible in the live-action sequel. If he chooses to kill the villain, however, she takes him with her to her death.
    • Shivers 2 gives the player the choice of giving a powerful artifact to the villain, its rightful owner, or a kind ghost. The first choice allows the villain to avenge his wife's death, but kills you; the second kills everyone in the world.
      • Technically, even the third is a sub-optimal ending, as the kind ghost has to solve the plot for you. The best ending is achieved by using the artifact yourself (which requires the player to solve one last Solve the Soup Cans puzzle).
    • Phantasmagoria 2 lets the player choose whether to remain on Earth, or go off with aliens. In a move rare for Sierra, neither ending is explicitly "right", though the first choice does lead to a longer cutscene.
    • Conquest of the Longbow ended with the player, controlling Robin Hood, being arrested and tried for being an outlaw as well as all the crimes the player may or may not have committed during the game. Depending on your actions, Robin might be pardoned, marry Maid Marian, or be found guilty and executed.
    • Both Laura Bow games have two different endings. In The Colonel's Bequest, the ending depends on whether you shoot Henri or Rudy. In The Dagger of Amon Ra, you must use clues obtained throughout the game to answer the coroner's questions correctly—get too many wrong and you'll receive the bad ending, in which pretty much every surviving character comes off much worse off, from losing their job to being brutally murdered. Answering correctly results in a happier ending for all (except the murderer, of course).
      • A third minor ending can also be found if you correctly answer all the questions, but lack the evidence needed to prove your points. The ending leads to a mix of the good and bad endings where everyone is either so-so (with alternative dialogue or fates from the good or bad ends) or still mad at Laura (as they would be in the bad ending). She still ends up killed, however, but the dagger is returned (as opposed to missing in the bad ending).
    • Quest for Glory I gives two endings, which is decided at the Brigand Leader's office. If you don't take the mirror, you will immediately go to the castle to be proclaimed Hero of Spielburg by the Baron, and leave for Shapeir. However, since Baba Yaga remains, the valley remains cursed, and "terror will continue to rule the land". If you do take the mirror, you'll leave through the secret passage and can choose to return to the castle for the bad ending, or deal with Baba Yaga, driving her out of the valley and freeing it of its curse.
    • King's Quest VI has several slight variations on the same ending depending on whether you complete all of the optional tasks, like befriending Jollo and bringing Cassima's parents Back from the Dead. None of the endings are exactly bad, but some are a little bittersweet. The ending will also say something about the path you didn't take, even the best ending.
    • In King's Quest IV, Graham will either die or be healed depending on whether or not you brought back the fruit of life.
    • In King's Quest VII, you can either save Edgar with the extra life or leave him to die. The ending will have either Rosella courting Edgar, or have their families mourning his death.
  • I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream offers no "winning" ending for the five characters' scenarios, only temporary escape from AM's torture or a reasonably dignified death. If you get the "good" ending for each scenario, in the endgame it's possible for one of the survivors (and only one) to defeat AM, by sacrificing themselves in the process. However, this also awakens a group of hibernating people who have survived the nuclear war by being in stasis on the moon, and starts a 300 years long terraforming process of the Earth, rendering it inhabitable in the future, and it is implied that the survivors mind have been uploaded to AM's hard disc. Otherwise, the sole survivor gets turned into a Great Soft Jelly Thing and left to brood on their miserable existence until the end of time. Harlan Ellison, the author of the story it's based on, initially objected to the inclusion of a "good" ending. (Then again, Harlan was a curmudgeon before he was out of his 20s.)
  • The fourth case in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Justice for All treads the line between a Bad Ending and a Nonstandard Game Over. Your client is actually guilty, but your assistant is being held hostage by an assassin who demands a "not guilty" verdict. Losing the case is a Game Over, but winning it means the murderer goes free and an innocent woman is subsequently convicted of the murder. Only by escaping the dilemma entirely, by getting the assassin to revise his opinion, can the player reach the good ending.
    • A miracle never happen.
    • The fourth game in the series also has a Bad Ending possibility at the end of its last case, but it's so blatantly obvious (You, temporarily playing the part of a juror, choose to vote on whether the defendant is guilty or not; it's not exactly hard to figure out which will give you the bad ending and which will give you the true ending) that the only way to actually get the Bad Ending is by deliberately trying to get it.
  • In Rise of the Dragon, there are two possible endings after you kill the Big Bad, depending on whether you saved your girlfriend or not earlier. (Obviously, the Best End comes when you do save her, and both live Happily Ever After.)
  • The end of the PC game Titanic: Adventure Out of Time had numerous different descriptions of the revised world history between the sinking of the Titanic and the Blitzkreig, based upon which of the game's puzzles and missions you manage to complete successfully. However, all but the best one end with the death of the PC. The worst ending features a terrorist shooting kicking off World War One, millions killed in the Russian Revolution and the purges that followed, the rise of Adolf Hitler, and your being killed in the bombing of London. The best ending has your actions avert the first world war, have a Hitler painting being one of the few surviving artifacts of the sinking, turning Adolf into a novelty success as a painter, and a different revolution in Russia turning it into a democratic paradise.
  • The Adventure Game Blackout is unusual, not only because it is performed almost entirely with puppets, but also by the way that the Multiple Endings are handled. There are several ways to get to the end of the game, some involving significantly more bloodshed than others, but the final result is always the same—you face the various facets of your shattered, schizophrenic mind, each offering their own suggestion as to how to proceed, and depending on which of them you choose, you get a different ending. Your earlier actions, thus, have no effect on the ending. Oh, and you've got 'bout a round dozen personalities, depending on whether you count the one you actually play as. The endings run the gamut from "Eloping with your psychiatrist and living happily ever after" to "BURN!!!"
  • While the Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis adventure game had several slightly different endings (You get turned into a wraith and die, you beat the baddies and the girl dies, you beat the baddies AND get the girl), and each miscellaneous death in the course of the game "rewarded" you with a pithy block of text (usually describing the happy fate of whoever killed you), the game was mostly notable for having three totally unique games (or "paths") that take up everything between departing from the university and entering Atlantis. Entitled fists (more fights and action), wits (more puzzles), and team (Sophia accompanies you, and you work with her to solve puzzles), the subtle nature of the path-choosing scene meant that many players never knew the missed two thirds of the game.
    • Though you really only have two different endings. The you dying ending just means you screwed up. Plus, the path you choose doesn't make you necessarily get a different ending; even if you go without Sophia, she will turn up later on, so you must still make the choice of saving or not saving her.
  • The Blade Runner game had 13 different endings, depending on which characters were replicants and on the choices you made.
  • Penguin Adventure had two endings—a sad ending where the penguin retrieved the MacGuffin needed to heal the princess's disease, only to find her already dead, and a happy ending where she survives. There's no Karma Meter—the choice between the two endings is made by how many times you pause the game. Pause the game once, and exactly once, and the princess lives.
    • Some of you may wonder why a kid's game about a cute penguin contains such a bizarre Mind Screw. This was the very first game a certain Mr. Hideo Kojima worked on as an assistant designer.
  • The Tex Murphy game Pandora Directive features eight endings, all based on how dickish the main character's behavior is throughout the game. (That is, obviously, at the complete discretion of the player). Those endings range from "Tex betrays the world but is blown up before he can do too much damage" to "Tex has kinky sex with the girl of his dreams."
  • The 1996 Claymation Adventure Game The Neverhood let you choose the ending: You can either accept Klogg's offer to become ruler of the Neverhood (and become hideously mutated in the process) or take Klogg's crown and give it back to Hoborg, its original owner, which gets rid of Klogg and allows Hoborg to repopulate the Neverhood with more clay people.
  • The Dig, a mid-nineties Adventure Game from LucasArts, had two separate endings: Over the course of the game, the player has to use a 'life crystal' to revive one of his fallen teammates, who then becomes increasingly demented and addicted to said crystals, which eventually leads to his doom. Another of the player's cohorts dies near the endgame, and specifically begs not to be resurrected with a life crystal, so as to avoid the same fate as her former teammate. If the player breaks his promise and resurrects her, she commits suicide in horror by jumping off a nearby cliff. When the two teammates are brought back to life again in the ending, the latter of these teammates will either hug you or slap your face, depending on whether or not you resurrected her before.
  • Indie adventure game A Tale of Two Kingdoms has five. The normal good end where you defeat the evil sorcerer, and the best end where you also save the princess and know the identity of the assassin. Then there's two bad endings (one where you get permanently stuck in faerie land, and one where you give up and go home), and one really bad (should you choose to team up with the evil guys).
  • Fahrenheit (2005 video game) a.k.a. Fahrenheit (2005 video game) features three real finales and countless bad endings, since every single story point where you can get yourself killed/arrested/driven insane has its own ending narration ("And this is how my story ends..."). The real finales are determined by your performance in the final stand-offs against the Oracle and the AI: the good ending sees Lucas defeating both Clans, receiving the ultimate knowledge from Jade, and literally becoming a god, yet choosing to live with Carla; in the bad ending, Lucas kills the Oracle but loses to the AI, who proceeds to learn Jade's secret and attempt to continue the freezing of the world, even if there's a small ray of hope in Carla's pregnancy; in the last ending, Lucas loses to the Oracle, the AI goes into hiding instead of joining the fight, and the Orange Clan continues running the world (like they always did), carefully avoiding Lucas, who now lives with Carla. Many players consider the latter ending the "true" end of Fahrenheit.
    • There is also an additional 'ending' (which winds up being a variation on the good ending); losing to the Oracle sets off a scene where you take control of Carla, sneak up on a guard, knock him out, steal his gun, and shoot the Oracle in the back. The rest of the game proceeds as normal.
  • Super Voice World, an interactive (and weird) film about becoming a seiyuu, has a few possible endings hidden in the midst of Nonstandard Game Overs. They all are accessible from the last scene, where the player is supposed to meet Genda Tesshou in a bar in Ginza. The best ending, where you get the role you auditioned for and go on a date with your crush Tanaka Rie, can only be achieved by entering Club Masako and choosing the first option when leaving. Too bad the bar is unlocked only by entering one of the other bars first, which has the tendency to lead into a Nonstandard Game Over...
  • Starship Titanic featured this, though in a minor way. The regular ending is the ship gliding off into the distance. If you armed the bomb and didn't disarm it, however, the parrot would then scream and the ship would explode.
  • Trace Memory uses the "segmented endings" variant, where you can find out what really happened to D if you get every piece of information. Some of it is a real Guide Dang It, and if you don't get the true ending on your first try, it can border on Only Idiots May Get The True Ending—and in the area that can't be returned to after you've finished Chapter 1, no less. It's the sign that gives you the name of the house, and nothing else. You have to look at it in order to get the true ending.
  • Maniac Mansion had several endings, the worst if the entire team was killed or the house exploded. The good endings involves the space police, a record deal, or shooting the meteor into space, all of which results in the rescue of Dave's girlfriend, Sandy.
  • Heavy Rain can end in twenty two different ways, fitting for a game whose main selling point is "every action you take has a consequence." That doesn't mean that they actually scripted twenty two endings; instead they scripted two or three different endings for every character, which then combine in unique ways.
  • Sam and Max Freelance Police Season 3 (The Devil's Playhouse), Episode 5 (The City That Dares Not Sleep) features two slightly different endings, depending on what you think Sam's favorite part of Freelance Policing with Max is -- the adventuring or the crimefighting.
  • Where We Remain has three endings:
    • Normal Ending: You collect at least one flower over the course of the game and find the girl normally. She kisses you and the two of you presumably escape the island.
    • Cautiously Optimistic (if somewhat Bittersweet Ending) Ending: You don't collect any flowers over the course of the game. When you find the girl, she asks you if you're tired of playing this game, reveals that she gave you Laser-Guided Amnesia and set up this "save the girl and collect flowers for her" game to keep you happy and unaware of the terrible events that you unwittingly caused, and gives you a choice between taking a raft and leaving the island or staying with her to continue the "game". Taking the raft causes you to leave the island and her behind, but also express optimism about being able to start a new life somewhere else.
    • Definitely Bittersweet (and a bit of a Downer Ending) Ending: Available only on Expert difficulty. When you find the girl, don't talk to her just yet. Keep on going into purple-doored caves until you find a black-haired girl who gives you the power to kill one spirit. Go back and touch the blond girl, take the raft, and leave the island. You've escaped, but you've done something terrible in the process, and you suspect that it's not the only terrible thing you've done in your life...
  • In The First Degree has four endings as follows: First-Degree, Second-Degree, Manslaughter, and Not Guilty. The ending you are trying to achieve (because you are the prosecutor) is the First-Degree ending. Achieving this ending requires you to look at all the evidence, interview 3 witnesses before the trial (asking the right questions and the order of the questions will make a difference), and then going to trial which will have you question the 3 witnesses again, as well as questioning the defendant himself (and possibly a medical doctor the defense calls up). There is apparently more than one way to go through the questioning and achieve the First-Degree ending.


Video Games: Beat'Em Ups

  • Splatterhouse 3 had four endings. Which you got were decided by if you beat the first three levels quickly enough to save your wife and son. (Note: The endings do not actually have names.)
  • The first Streets of Rage has two endings, the first of which has the heroes kicking ass on Mr. X and saving the city, and the other, which is only possible by having one character accept Mr. X's offer to join him and the other refusing; the winner of the fight between the players will become the new Big Bad after defeating Mr. X. You even get "BAD END" upon the closing of the credits.
    • Streets of Rage 3 has no fewer than four endings.
      • Beating Stage Five on Easy has the robotic Mr. X insulting you and Zan telling you that you must try harder.
      • If you fail to save the real Chief, the first bad ending has you fighting Shiva as the final boss and when you beat him, Zan interrogates him to find out where Mr. X is, but he won't talk, and the crew is at a dead end.
      • A bad ending where the final boss is beaten but time runs out. The bombs explode, people die, the city gets ruined, and the trust the people of the city placed in Axel and the gang is damaged. Bare Knuckle 3 attempts to soften the blow by stating that either way, nuclear war between America and Lima has been prevented. That the bombs wrecked the city is incidental; in time this tragedy will be forgotten.
      • And the best ending, where you beat the final boss and save the city from the bombs/prevent general death and destruction around the world.
  • Final Fight Guy, the second SNES port of the original Final Fight, along with the two SNES sequels Final Fight 2 and Final Fight 3, each had a segmented ending in which a new scene is added to the ending for each difficulty setting. Thus, the full ending is only shown by the completing the game on the hardest setting. Likewise, the dialogue in the ending of Final Fight 3 will change depending on the characters being used.
  • Scott Pilgrim vs. the World has multiple endings depending on who you are playing as.
    • Scott's Ending is Ramona moving away, but suddenly dating Kim Pine, Knives Chau, and Envy Adams all at the same time.
    • Ramona's Ending is the generic one used in the graphic novels and movies. Ramona gets to continue dating Scott and they both go through a subspace door to their future.
    • Kim's Ending is that Scott and Kim pass by each other one day. Kim has a suggestive smile on her face and she suddenly walks off into the sunset. Holding hands with Knives.
    • Stephen's Ending is that Sex Bob-Omb plays an awesome concert and money randomly rained from the sky. Maybe it was all just a dream.
    • Nega Scott's Ending is enslaving the rest of the world and sending the rest of the characters off to the salt mines.
    • Knives' Ending is marrying Scott against his will.
  • Undercover Cops by IREM has a bad ending if the player fails to prevent the final boss from dropping an atomic bomb into the city and seven possible good endings, depending on the number of players and the characters being used.
  • The PC Engine version of Double Dragon II: The Revenge has three endings, one for each difficulty level.
    • In Easy mode, the final boss escapes and mocks the Lee brothers.
    • In Normal mode, the final boss dies, but his last words are left ambiguous.
    • In Hard mode, the ending is the same as Normal, except the final boss' body turns into a skeleton and there's an extra scene where Billy and Jimmy return to the city to find Marian restored to life.
  • The battle against Mortus in Comix Zone is a Timed Mission. Winning in time allows you to bring Alissa into the real world. Otherwise, you fail to save her and get an It's a Wonderful Failure ending.


Video Games: Fighters

  • In Street Fighter Alpha 3, the ending differs depending on whether the player defeats the final boss (M. Bison for every character besides himself and Evil Ryu, Ryu if the player is M. Bison, or Shin Akuma if the player is Evil Ryu): while defeating the final boss will show the player character's ending, losing to M. Bison or Shin Akuma as the final boss will show Bison's ending, in which he uses the defeated character's body (Ryu in Bison's standard ending) to power-up the Psycho Drive and rule the world; losing to Ryu with Bison plays Ryu's ending instead.
    • Super Street Fighter II (and by proxy, Super Turbo) allowed players to decide whether Chun-Li would continue her career as a detective or live her life as a civilian: choosing the former shows Chun-Li in a police uniform (based on an early design of her character) beating up a group of drug dealing thugs; while choosing the latter shows Chun-Li in a night club beating up a group of thugs trying to harass her. Regardless of which career path she chooses, she still ends up getting into fights.
    • Jun the Swan's ending parodies the above Chun-Li ending in Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All Stars.
  • Rival Schools: United By Fate has a "poor" ending for each character if you didn't fight the True Final Boss, Hyo; these endings are all the same—the character and their partner standing over a defeated Raizo, the narrator noting they had not yet met the "real power" behind the story. Meeting certain requirements unlocks the fight with Hyo, who can be defeated to get the character's "good" endings. Of the "good" endings, the one for Hyo is actually a "bad" ending: his plan to take over the schools succeeds, but Hyo regrets defeating his twin brother Kyosuke in order to do so.
    • In the sequel Project Justice, one bad ending is shown if you beat the Darkside Student Council story, which focuses around that game's Big Bad, Kurow. His plan to take over the school succeeds, and unlike Hyo, he gloats about his victory -- and celebrates by petting the hair of his sister Yurika, whom he has Brainwashed and Crazy into becoming his follower along with most of the game's cast.
      • The second bad ending in PJ happens in the Gedo High story. If Wild Daigo isn't finished off with a Team-Up or Party-Up in Chapter 4, the player's team of Edge, Gan, Akira, and Zaki fight him again in Chapter 5, with Kurow and Momo backing up the brainwashed Daigo. After winning that fight, an ending is shown where Kurow and his group escape, leaving Daigo dead, Akira in tears over his corpse, and Edge and Gan swearing revenge for Daigo's death.
  • Blood Storm, the sequel to Time Killers, has all the characters have a Nice Job Breaking It, Hero ending... except Tremor, who gets a Happily Ever After ending, and Tempest, who is Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves. Arguably, Razor has a good one, as well, as the kingdoms unite... aside from Cyberia, heavily hinted to be Exclusively Evil, and his war against which is what unites the kingdoms.
    • HELLHOUND TAKES CHARGE! SCORCH RULES! THE PLANET BURNS!!
      • I just saw that. Wasn't expecting it. Yikes!
  • The all-but-forgotten Killer Instinct 2 by Rare has multiple endings for each character. In the game, each character may have either one ally (Maya), one enemy (TJ Combo, Glacius, Sabrewulf, Spinal, and Kim Wu), an ally and an enemy (Jago, Orchid, and Tusk), or even two enemies (Fulgore). Basically whether or not a fatal move is performed (or if the background is interactive) on a specific character decides the ending; you obviously would want to kill your enemy while leaving any allies alive for the better endings.
    • For one straightforward example, if the player beats the game playing as TJ Combo, if Tusk is alive, TJ Combo sees there is a possibility to rebuild his name in the past, so he foregoes returning back to the present and becomes a champion. If Tusk is dead, Combo is convinced there are no possible challengers, returns to the present, and starts to rebuild his boxing career.
    • A more complicated example is Orchid: her ally is Jago and her enemy is Sabrewulf. If Jago is alive but Sabrewulf is dead, on his death bed Gargos reveals Jago and Orchid are siblings and they form a fighting team. If Jago is dead and Sabrewulf is dead, Orchid lives but mourns the fact she murdered Jago. If Jago is alive and Sabrewulf is alive, Gargos possesses Sabrewulf and attacks, but Jago successfully kills the demon. If Jago is dead but Sabrewulf is alive, Gargos possesses Sabrewulf and attacks Orchid off-guard; she dies and Gargos gets his revenge.
    • Not all the character's endings are happy though; some are just less than others. If playing as Spinal, if Kim Wu is alive he dies; but if Kim Wu is dead, he simply is left to an eternity alone without purpose.
  • The King of Fighters 2003 has two endings, each with its own final boss, depending on how you beat the character Kusanagi: The real final boss, Chizuru/Maki tag team followed by Mukai, can be reached by beating Kusanagi with a DM (Super Move), while failure to do which pits you against Adelheid instead.
    • The King of Fighters XIII also has two endings: If your score is too low by the time you beat stage 6, Saiki's plans fail and Ash leaves the scene without doing much. Otherwise, you will have to fight Saiki and later Evil Ash, and get the true ending where Ash is RetGoned.
    • Several other SNK fighting games also have multiple endings: SNK vs. Capcom SVC Chaos has a true ending which can be achieved by beating the True Final Boss; otherwise, you'll get a generic ending saying that your character simply vanishes. Then, depending on how well you play, Neo Geo Battle Coliseum gives you four endings (and four final bosses) to choose from.
  • BlazBlue gives each character three possible endings for their story mode, because the BlazBlue universe is set in a Timey-Wimey Ball. Over the story mode, the player can make choices or do certain things that affect the ending you get. Standard fare. There's the True Endings, the Bad Endings, and the Gag Reels. There's also the game's True Ending, that encompasses multiple characters and concludes the plot so far.


Video Games: First/Third Person Action

  • Call of Duty: Sort of in World At War.
    • In the final mission of World at War's the American Campaign: Roebuck and Polonsky get themselves into hand-to-hand combat with two Japanese soldiers that pull an I Surrender, Suckers. The player is given the option to save Roebuck or Polonsky. After the final battle, the character you picked to survive will go up to the body of the other, remove his dogtags, and hand them to you, as Roebuck gives a final narration.
    • Before the final mission in World at War, Reznov will read a passage from Chernov's diary. If the player went and slaughtered helpless Germans during the Soviet Campaign, the passages will be critical, if the player spared them, the passages will praise the player. If the player did a mixture of both, the passages will paint the character as a moral question mark.
  • In Metal Gear Solid, you can get an ending with either the loser sidekick (Otacon) or the love interest (Meryl), depending on whether or not you pass the torture minigame and if Meryl makes it out alive. While the Meryl ending has now been confirmed as canonical, with Meryl reappearing alive and kicking in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, neither ending is explicitly referred to as the Good or the Bad ending (the game calls them Ending A and Ending B). Interestingly, the revelation from the non-canonical ending of Metal Gear Solid is also confirmed as canon (Meryl is actually Colonel Campbell's illegitimate daughter, not his niece) in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, setting up a major conflict.
    • Before that, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty featured Snake sporting (and explicitly referencing) the infinite ammo bandanna, the player's reward for reaching Meryl's ending in the previous game, as a subtle hint that the Meryl ending was actually canon. The in-game novel, "The Shocking Conspiracy Behind Shadow Moses", offers a different explanation, suggesting that the protagonist of the novel found the bandanna on the beach at Shadow Moses, where Meryl found it in the game. The 'alien' who rescued the protagonist (Snake through the eyes of a Conspiracy Theorist) took the bandanna from him, and escaped with it, thus subtly implying that Snake got the Otacon ending. (Nastasha's book contradicts this again by saying it seemed Snake managed to rescue Meryl. Incidentally, the theme of the game was about choosing the path to follow when presented with conflicting information about the world, and not fussing about absolute reality.)
    • Substance features five non-canonical 'Snake Tales' missions. Four of these have two endings, and which one is chosen is usually determined by whether the player kills the final boss or not. Snake Tale A has five, as skipping a large chunk of the mission makes it possible to fight the boss almost straight away with two alternate endings. The player can also re-enter the elevator Snake uses right at the beginning to end the scenario on a weird note. This could be considered a Nonstandard Game Over as it does lead the player to a game over screen (with no continue option though).
  • Abe's Oddysee features four endings: Standard Good, Standard Bad, Perfect Good, and Perfect Bad, depending on how many of the 99 mudokons you managed to save. The end of the gameplay shows you being captured by the baddies. If you have rescued 50 or more mudokons, they band together and rescue you, and you are hailed as a hero (Standard Good). If you rescued fewer than that, they let you die (Standard Bad). If you rescued all 99, you get the Standard Good ending, but also a teaser for the next game and some production art (Perfect Good). If you killed as many mudokons as possible (some mudokons must be rescued in order to progress in the game), you are appointed Head of Employee Relations by the baddies (Perfect Bad). Oddly, the Perfect Bad ending is arguably the best, as it is the only one that gives you any future advantage in the game—you are provided with a cheat code that will only work once the Perfect Bad ending has been completed. The sequel Abe's Exoddus has a similar ending setup, only the number of mudokons is raised to 300 (with the Good/Bad threshold raised to 150).
  • STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl has a least 7 endings. 5 are "false" early endings obtained by interacting with the "wish maker", often by players who had not fully interpreted the game plot, which wish/hallucination you get is based on your interactions and status in the game (in order of precedence):
    • Zone goes away. If your reputation is good, you wish for the zone to disappear. You are shown a clear sky, green grass. The characters pupils are gone. You have become blind.
    • Money. If you have a lot of money but a lower rep, you wish for money. Gold coins fall from the sky. The coins are actually bricks, metal, and other debris you are soon crushed under.
    • Rule the world. If you kill 2 main characters, you wish to rule the world. The monolith absorbs the character, leaving only a pile of clothes.
    • Corrupt humanity. If you kill everyone and your rep is very negative, you wish for humanity to be "controlled". The player has a vision of the end of the world, followed by waking in a black void.
    • Immortality. If you do none of the above, you wish to be immortal. You are transformed into a metal statue.
      • The 2 main endings are based on the player ignoring the wishmaker, finding the true ending section, and following that. The endings then become:
      • Join the C-Consciousness hivemind controlling the area, and attempt to fix the zone.
      • Destroy the equipment, and you are shown a bright, grassy field. It is implied that the zone was repaired and you have succeeded.
  • S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat has an ending consisting of 20 segments explaining the fate of important places, characters and factions. Most of them have two variants, some have three.
  • BioShock (series) had two separate endings. In the better ending, you die in a hospital bed, surrounded by the little sisters you've saved. They are presumably rehabilitated and go on to live long, fruitful lives... coming back to the nest to see you off at the end. Otherwise, you unleash hordes of gene-spliced homocidal maniacs upon the surface world.
    • Technically, it has three endings but the only difference between the bad and not-as-bad ending is the narrator's tone of voice.
    • Originally, there was only supposed to be one ending (with your decision over whether to harvest or save the Little Sisters affecting nothing other than your conscience), but Executive Meddling demanded otherwise.
    • The sequel follows suit, with your actions affecting how the impressionable little sister named Eleanor (your former Little Sister now grown up) will mature in the final ending. If you killed the designated NPCs and harvested little sisters, Eleanor drowns her mother Sophia (the Big Bad) during the escape to the surface, then takes your ADAM for herself (killing you), after which she heads off to bring terror to the world. If you killed a few of the NPCs, but showed mercy to others, Eleanor watches Sophia die rather than actively killing her, then tries to save you. You then have an option of saving yourself or letting yourself die: if you save yourself, Eleanor takes your ADAM for herself; if you let yourself die, Eleanor acknowledges you giving her freedom, albeit saddened by her loss. However, if you spare the NPCs and save the little sisters, Eleanor saves Sophia from drowning, then uses her needle to inject your consciousness into her. Your body dies, but you are now a part of her, and she is hopeful for the future as she and the little sisters you saved look over the sunrise.
  • Blood Omen, the first game in the Legacy of Kain series, had another set of two endings depending on a choice made at the very end: As Kain, the player could either kill himself to restore peace and prosperity to the land of Nosgoth, or choose not to kill himself, condemning the land to an eternity of decay as its vampire overlord. Interestingly, the latter of these two endings was made canon in the game's sequels.
  • At the end of the original Half-Life, the player has a choice: join the G-Man or die. Each choice has its own Game Over screen and consequences.
  • The standard ending of Max Payne 2 sees Mona Sax die from her gunshot wounds. Beating the game on the hardest difficulty level, Dead On Arrival, unlocks an alternate ending in which she lives.
  • No More Heroes offers a segmented ending in its endgame: After Travis becomes the first-ranked assassin in the country, an up-and coming assassin breaks into Travis' motel room to kill him while he's on the can. If the player buys all the katana upgrades, the "Real" ending becomes available where Henri kills the assassin, fights Travis one last time, and announces that he's Travis' long lost twin brother. Then things get even more bizarre...
  • Pathways into Darkness had seven endings, including:
    • Failing to set off the nuke (bad ending).
    • Setting up the nuke but failing to escape the blast in time (okay ending).
    • Setting up the nuke and escaping on foot (good ending).
    • Setting up the nuke and calling in you helicopter extraction team (best ending).
  • Prince of Persia - Warrior Within has two endings, the standard ending where you kill Kaileena, and the good ending (which is also the canon one) where you kill the Dahaka and leave with Kaileena for Babylon. You can only get the good ending if you find all nine of the life upgrades in the game.
  • Strife has 3 endings. Good, bad, real bad. In the good ending, the boss dies, humanity is saved, and the mission control chick "rewards" you. In the bad ending, it turns out that she was the boss all along. You still defeat her, but the war still rages on, and humanity's chances of survival are slim. In the worst ending (you die on the final bossfight), humanity becomes extinct.
  • Reservoir Dogs is an interesting example; since everyone playing it has presumably seen the film, and knows what's going to happen, the ending answers the only unanswered question from the movie: What happens to Mr. Pink? It depends on your professional-versus-psycho meter.
    • Psycho: Shot by the police.
    • Career Criminal: Arrested.
    • Professional: Escapes in a police cruiser, managing to salvage a few diamonds in the process.
    • Slightly-professional: Escape without the diamonds.
  • Action Doom 2 Urban Brawl features some 5 endings depending on specific choices the player makes at specific parts (including whether you win or lose a specific boss fight), varying from the very good (you reunite with your daughter), through the semi-good (you never find your daughter or find a poor woman's kidnapped son, but marry the woman), down to bad (you take too long and your daughter is gone; you find your daughter, but she is afraid of you and would rather stay with the villain; or you accidentally end up killing your daughter during the final boss fight.)


Video Games: Interactive Fiction

  • The Infocom Interactive Fiction romance game Plundered Hearts had several endings, depending on what you did in the final scene.
  • Typing "click heels" at any point during Windham Classics's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz gives a Nonstandard Game Over where you are back in Kansas, safe with your dog... but forever wonder "what would have been" if you stayed in Oz. There are also Nonstandard Game Over scenarios where you stay with the Munchkins, or go with the wizard back to Omaha.
  • Slouching Towards Bedlam has five endings depending on how you deal with the Logos situation. No ending can be considered the "true" one, and the main point of the game is deciding for yourself if something like the Logos would be beneficial or harmful to humanity.
  • Galatea, an Interactive Fiction game by Emily Short, has a variety of endings depending on how the player character interacts with the eponymous NPC. The PC can help Galatea become human, become lovers with her, provoke her into killing him, trade places with her... and that's just a small section of the endings. Alabaster, made by the same author, has no less than 18 unique endings, most of them Bittersweet Ending.
    • Emily Short loves this trope, in fact: Bronze has three possible endings (you kill the Beast; you free the Beast from his curse but fail to free his servants; you free the Beast AND his servants), Glass six (depending on which sister you suggest to the Prince, and whether you remain silent during their interaction or speak up about something), and Metamorphoses at least eight endings (depending on which "mirror" you look into after you collect all the MacGuffins).
  • Pick Up the Phone Booth and Aisle is ALL alternate endings. So is Aisle, one of the interactive fiction games it was based on.
  • The Dreamhold has three endings, depending on the course of action you took after regaining your memories. You can choose to complete the diagram you failed to last time, or put the last shred of mask on the mirror, or literally ascend up into the stars with the right equipment.
  • Escape From St Marys: The two endings are largely the same, but only one lets you actually exit the school.
  • Choice of Games is often fairly stingy with these; their games have many and varied choices, but they're more about the journey than the destination, and their writing team considers Railroading to be a best practice for a Choose Your Own Adventure-style game, due to the ridiculous amount of writing required otherwise.
    • Choice of the Dragon is perhaps most notable for averting this trope; at the end of the game, you go into hibernation. Of course, it's possible to get a Nonstandard Game Over before then.
    • Choice of Broadsides has variations in the epilogue depending on your spouse (or lack thereof), your wealth, your patronage stat, and whether or not you captured Villeneuve's frigate.
    • Choice of Romance lacks a Nonstandard Game Over, but has three possible romance options, plus several Downer Endings where you get none of them. However, you can only continue to Choice of Intrigues if you end up with the Queen, an ending that has several variations of its own. Intrigues has only one ending, and ends on a Cliff Hanger. Presumably, the third installment will have multiple endings, as it concludes the series.
    • Choice of the Vampire is, as of yet, unfinished.
  • The yuri-centric H-game Yukkuri Panic Escalation has four possible endings.

Video Games: MMORPG

  • The Doomwood saga from Adventure Quest Worlds has multiple ways that it can end, depending on who you sent for before the final battle with Vordred and whether or not you chose to help Artix or betray him.
    • If you sent for Empress Gravelyn, she finishes Vordred off with the weapon he had made from Noxus' skull. Upon learning that Artix is the Champion of Darkness, Gravelyn offers to make Artix the champion of her undead army, with her slaying Artix to become the Champion herself if he should refuse. Artix refuses, as he is a Paladin of Swordhaven and servant of Good King Alteon. Gravelyn renews her vow to finish what her father started when Drakath falls before handing the Noxus Head Staff off to you.
    • If you sent for Lady Vayle, she protects you from Vordred's final attack before challenging Artix in vengeance for her brother. Artix refuses to fight Vayle, but states that she needs to talk to someone first. A sad scene then ensues where the spirit orb of Vayle's long-lost brother, who she became a necromancer to try to bring back, explains to her that what she did was wrong and that he thanks you and Artix for allowing him the chance to redeem himself. Vayle is moved to tears by this, but she's not forgiving Artix anytime soon -- her life's work was ruined by him, and she angrily states that the next time they meet, they will be mortal enemies.
    • If you sent for Zorbak, he stomps Vordred's form into the ground before claiming Vordred's skull for his collection of thrones (including Drakonnan's helmet from Dragon Fable). The three of you then speculate on who the Champion of Light would be.
    • If you sent for Daimyo, he does much the same thing as Zorbak, minus the skull-claiming. Artix is confused about a lot of things, but when you try to give him the Shadowscythe Amulet, he tells you to hang on to it, as you are the person he trusts most in the world. We then cut to Sally, who is all alone again and hating every minute of it. Drakath, in one of his rare moments of kindness, shows up and gives Sally Vordred's skull. She vows to rebuild him more powerful than before and rebuild the original Necropolis. This is the True End, and we will be seeing these two again.
    • If you betrayed Artix, you literally backstab him and kill him, and Vordred becomes the Champion of Darkness and rewards you as you very much deserve by making you the very first of his undead minions as he unleashes an undead apocalypse upon all of Lore.


Video Games: Puzzle

  • Meteos has a whopping twelve endings, though they're just text with a graphic on the bottom of the screen. The Star Trip mode has three variations, and each has its own unique endings (2, 7, and 3 respectively). One of the endings involves the antagonistic planet being cut up by a gigantic fork.
  • The Death Mode in Tetris the Grand Master 2 PLUS normally terminates your game at level 500. However, if you reach level 500 in 3 minutes and 25 seconds or less, the game continues, you get the rank of M, and can go all the way to level 999. Surviving all the way to that level yields the true ending and the rank of Grand Master.
    • Tetris: The Grand Master 3 's Master has something similar; if you take more than 7 minutes to reach level 500, the game ends prematurely—a feature known among TGM fans as a torikan, and you get a message reading "EXCELLENT -- but...let's go better (sic) next time." Shirase mode, which has 1,300 levels, has a torikan at both level 500 and also level 1,000.
  • Braid and Eversion are examples where the good ending is even more of a bad end than the already bad standard ending.
    • In Braid, the standard ending reveals that Tim is the "monster" the Princess was trying to escape from. To get the alternate ending, you have to collect the hidden stars. And you have to kill the Princess in order to find the last one.
    • In Eversion's standard ending, you find the Princess shortly before she turns into an Eldritch Abomination and devours you. In the alternate ending, your character mutates into an Eldritch Abomination as well. In the HD version, there's a third ending where both of you turn into intermediate creatures who are stuck forever.
    • Mind you, both of these aren't so much causing a worse ending as they are revealing that the ending you already got was even worse than you previously realized. At least, that's how they seem...
  • Escape From the Mindmaster gave you an ending whether you won or lost, in which you would see your score and get a rating from the Mindmaster. If you won, you got a screen saying "A Winner!", and fireworks would shoot out of the "A".
  • Wario Ware Inc. has a secret ending in Orbulon's stage; should you lose 3 lives, but if you beat the boss with one Alien Bunny left without quitting or getting a Game Over, after the message, which involves Orbulon telling the player to be amazed by alien powers, said Alien Bunny will only drop Orbulon off.
    • There are also two more secret endings; the ending when you have 3 lives remaining, and the one where you have 2 lives remaining. If you view Orbulon's ending again via Options, then you will end up with the 4 lives ending, so the only way to view the three secret endings is to lose a life and make it to the end of the boss and win without getting a Game Over.


Video Games: Role Playing

  • Several Dragon Quest games feature multiple endings:
    • In Dragon Quest I, when the player finally faces the Dragonlord, he offers the choice to join him and rule half the world. If "no" is selected, then the player engages in battle and gets a good ending after defeating him, but if the player chooses "yes", the player gets a bad ending. Defeat the Dragonlord and you get one of the three good endings based on where the princess is when you return to the castle (you brought her to the castle before killing the Dragonlord, you arrive carrying her after killing the Dragonlord, she's still imprisoned in the cave). The (minimalist) end game cut scene varies a bit for each ending. In the last one, the hero travels off to faroff lands alone.
    • In Dragon Quest V, the ending can be altered depending on the player's choice on who the protagonist should marry half way through the game.
    • In Dragon Quest VIII, the ending can be altered depending on whether or not the player has obtained a specific item during the Endgame Plus.
  • The third Phantasy Star game, which alters depending on the marriage choices made by the player through the game.
  • The endings of Fallout and Fallout 2 are a series of short epilogues detailing the future of the different settlements the player visited, with multiple endings highlighting the player's actions and their moral implications. For example, in Junktown of the original Fallout, the player can make the good choice of siding with the sheriff against the greedy casino-owner. If the player sides with the Sheriff, the town becomes a bastion of law and order. If he sides with the casino owner, it becomes a Wretched Hive.
  • In addition to the "slideshow" mentioned above, Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura has a more traditional approach to multiple endings: when you get to the Big Bad, you're given the option of either destroying him (your original goal) or siding with him. The latter leads to a bad ending where your character rules over a world now completely devoid of life.
  • Nippon Ichi games such as Disgaea, Makai Kingdom, and Disgaea 2, which also include a number of Nonstandard Game Over endings as well. One of their earlier games, La Pucelle: Tactics, gave most chapters within the story multiple endings, but only one final end. Well, unless you complete all the optional dungeons, which grants Prier a unique change of character... (And may be canon, considering her cameo in Disgaea.)
  • Most of the Atelier games (published in the West by Nippon Ichi) have multiple endings; some of the earlier, free-form Atelier games have upwards of thirteen of them, ranging from good to bad. The Iris sub-series mostly did away with this, but for the Mana Khemia games and the Atelier outings on the DS, the concept returned with vengeance. It'll be back IN THE THUNDERDOME! with the upcoming Atelier Rorona for the Play Station 3; that game is being touted as having thirty such endings of various types, among the highest count in the history of the medium.
    • It actually doesn't. There's 4 "quality" endings, dependent on how well you do with the store and how well you get along with the town populace, one for each secondary party member totalling 6, one for essentially getting everyone's character ending in one playthrough, one for being rich, one for making pies, and one for being an adventurer. That's a total of fourteen. However, only one of them can be gotten in each playthrough. It's quite a lot of work for Trophy hounds. The rest are essentially Game Overs.
  • The Ogre Battle games.
  • Chrono Trigger and its sequel, Chrono Cross, had dozens of different endings depending on when you fought the final boss (who can theoretically be fought at almost any point in the game, but only in a New Game+ would you be expected to actually be able to do it):
    • While a cat in the Developer's Room tells you Chrono Trigger has 10 endings, it officially has 12 endings, 2 more if you count Non Standard Game Overs, and one more for the DS Updated Rerelease, giving us grand total of 15. Moreover, the 2 "normal" endings that are easily achievable without a New Game+ have two major variations each depending on whether or not you crash your time machine, and several smaller ones. Two of the other endings are basically just glorified credit rolls, though.
    • In Chrono Cross, you could only fight the last boss at any point in New Game+, due to only actually having the item necessary to do so there. Here, what characters you had in the party at the time also changed the ending as well.
      • Given that you have 40+ characters, you have to beat the game no less than 23 times just to see all of the possible character responses.
  • When Mother was translated, there were some changes to the game, even to the sprites themselves. The ending is included in the changes. When Giegue flees in the original Japanese version, Ninten, Ana, and Loid turn around and stand there as the credits roll steadily behind them. Once "To Be Continued..." shows up, pressing a button makes the trio disappear. In the perfected Earthbound, when Giegue flees, an epilogue plays, showing: Ana reunited with her mother, who was abducted by Giegue; Teddy revealed to be okay and belting it out at the Live House; the kids in Youngtown reunited with their parents, who were also abducted; Ana returned to her house and telling Ninten and Loid that she'll never forget them; Loid being congratulated by the kids in Twinkle Elementary; Ninten coming home to be greeted by his family; Ana reading a letter given to her by Ninten; and Ninten taking a nap as all of the characters you've encountered in the game run by, ending with Ninten, Loid, Ana, and Teddy walking up and facing the screen. And then the credits roll, ending with Ninten's dad calling on the phone.
  • At the end of Neverwinter Nights 2, the player is shown what happens to various locations and people who were influenced by the PC's decisions. For the ending itself, though, there are only two options. A good or neutral PC defeats the King of Shadows, then everyone dies. An evil PC may instead choose to side with the King of Shadows and terrorize the Sword Coast, though the sequel assumes that the player picked the good ending.
    • The sequel/expansion pack provides a far more interesting array of different endings concerning both the PC's fate and that of his/her companions. For example, if you gathered all Mask Fragments, you can get the ultimate good ending and put Akachi's soul to rest while also freeing yourself and the land of the curse. Regardless of whether you have the mask pieces, you can choose the selfish ending and rid yourself of the curse, but leave it free to continue plaguing Rashemen. If you failed to collect the Mask Fragments, you may choose the completely selfless ending, locking the curse inside yourself and eternally staying in the City of Judgment to contain it, praised as a hero, but forever trapped. Or, there's the ultra evil approach; bending the curse to your will to become an unstoppable god-killing abomination with all of the benefits of the curse but none of the drawbacks. Similarly, the endings for your companions vary depending on both your choices in the game and the actual influence with them. For example, if you've pursued a romance, your beloved may choose to stay with you in the City of Judgment in the selfless scenario. At the other end of the spectrum, you may reach the end of the story with all of your companions dead by your hand.
    • The second expansion "Storm of Zehir" has a similar conclusion if you've played the main quest to the end, showing the fates of your companions and the towns you visited according to your actions. Unusually, after seeing this, you can Bluff or Intimidate the storyteller into giving the different endings by telling him how to set each variable. This even extends to companions you never actually recruited (or even encountered, since several are found randomly wandering the world map) and side-quests you never found out about.
  • In Sailor Moon: Another Story, there are two endings that will play out depending on how you defeat Apsu, who has fused with Sin the second time you fight her:
    • If you beat her with Sailor Moon's team, Sailor Moon will use the Silver Crystal to finish her off, and get Sin to do a Heel Face Turn like her brother Anshar and the other Oppositio Senshi have. Anshar will then give Chibi-Moon the pendant she accidentally lost on the day they first met and they'll kiss. The Sailor Senshi, Tuxedo Kamen, Luna, and Artemis go back to the present, Hotaru turns back into an infant, and everyone goes home.
    • If Sailor Moon's team falls, it's up to Chibi-Moon's team, but... with her last bit of strength, Apsu tries to attack Chibi-Moon, but Anshar saves her and tries to convince his sister Sin that she's not evil. Once Sin snaps out of it, Luna tells Chibi-Moon to use the Silver Crystal, but the fates of Chibi-Moon and Anshar will change, and she isn't happy about this because they loved each other. And then, the next day, Chibi-Usa bumps into Anshar again like when they first met. Due to his fate being altered, Anshar doesn't remember Chibi-Usa, and neither does Sin. Chibi-Usa asks Setsuna if it's right to leave Anshar alone, and Setsuna says it is because it is fate. Chibi-Usa accepts this, and says that she'll never forget him and she loves him.
  • The first Baldur's Gate and Shadows of Amn only have one ending, but the expansion to the second game that concludes the story has three main endings (Good God, Bad God, and Mortal) as well as side-endings for your various companions.
  • In Fable, you can play as good or evil. However, in both the original and the "Lost Chapters" expansion, the choice of the "good" ending or the "evil" ending is a conscious decision made by the player between when the final boss is killed and when the ending movie starts.
    • Fable II is odd in that although it leaves almost every other choice throughout the game ambiguous, it makes the Evil ending for the original game, and the Good ending for the Lost Chapters segment canon.
    • Fable II's ending sequence actually lacks a "good" or "evil" choice. Regardless of your goodness or evilness, you kill the guy you've been after for the entire game, either out of revenge (evil) or to save the world (good), and that's only implied. But, afterwards, you get the option of making a wish, and can choose to either revive everyone that died in the Big Bad's evil scheme (the "good" choice), you can choose to revive your family and dog (the "neutral" choice), or you can wish for more money than you know what to do with (the "evil" choice). All choices have little effect on the world at large. Instead, the major world changes result entirely from your choices in the game: Old Town can be either pristine or a slum, the Temple of Light can flourish and be abandoned, and so on.
    • Fable also has the flaw of your goodness and evilness being highly influenced by armour and clothing. One can easily switch back and forth by literally changing clothes (in fact, it is the only real way, as a good character in good clothing will have a very hard time becoming evil, even by slaughtering entire villages).
  • Both console Kingdom Hearts games and Final Fantasy X-2 had "segmented endings".
  • The Langrisser series features multiple endings in every game except for the first (ironically, the only game in the series to see an official release outside Japan). Not only are there multiple paths through the main plot, but the individual character epilogues can change depending on how actively they participated in battle, and how many times they were reduced to 0 HP.
    • For example, in the SNES version of the second game, Der Langrisser, the main character Erwin and his friend Hein start the game following the Light army of the Kalxath kingdom, but can join the Rayguard Empire depending on Erwin's answers to various questions in the early part of the game. If Erwin is the first to obtain the Holy Sword Langrisser in the battle for the weapon, he can betray the Empire and join with the forces of Chaos. Depending on his answers to other questions in the game, he can proceed to turn his back on the Chaos armies as well and pursue a path independent of all three factions. The paths involved are known respectively as the Light, Imperial, Chaos, and Independent paths, and each path features a different roster of playable allies (most of whom can also be enemy characters on other paths), as well as several possible battle paths depending on decisions made during the game. Though there are only four basic plot endings, the individual character epilogues which display afterward vary depending on whether the characters reached their highest class change, how many enemy units they killed, how many times they were reduced to 0 HP, and so on—if they were particularly active in the battles, they go on to greatness throughout their lives, whereas if they were frequently reduced to 0 HP or sat at the back and did nothing, they fade into obscurity after the events of the game. Even within each of the four possible story paths (and the subpaths within those paths), there are dozens, if not hundreds, of possible permutations of epilogues for the characters.
  • All three games in the Shadow Hearts series do this. Shadow Hearts has it based on whether you manage to beat a series of side bosses, which is nearly impossible unless you do it in the right order, although this order is provided on an item you get in the game. Oddly, Shadow Hearts: Covenant was actually based on the "bad" ending of the original, not because the good ending is terribly hard to get, but because it fits the tone of the series better. Of course, many of the fans disagreed. Shadow Hearts: From The New World was based on whether or not Tirawa's statues were fully leveled up.
    • Oddly, the ending you get in Shadow Hearts: Covenant is not determined at all by your playing ability or uncovering secrets, but the way you answer a single question toward the end of the game. It can be argued that what this actually tests is how well the player understands Yuri's character, as picking the less in-character response will net you the bad ending (although which answer is really more in-character is quite debatable.)
      • Also unique in that the good ending is the one where you die, and the bad ending is the one where you live. But it makes perfect sense in the story's context.
    • The prequel, Koudelka, has three endings. The really bad ending happens if you didn't pick up a certain item over the course of the game; the final boss kills everyone as soon as they enter the last area. You get the meh ending if you beat the final boss. And you get the "good" ending if you lose to the final boss—which is way harder and more time consuming than winning.
  • Deus Ex had three possible endings, none unambiguously "good", determined by which faction the player character chooses to support in the end. The sequel had a compromise setting based on the idea that all three factions had managed to achieve their goals, with or without the player character's help.
    • Game Mod The Nameless Mod had six endings. Only two are availble on any story line, the rest depending on what faction you supported.
    • Another mod, 2027, had three endings, which may or may not all be available depending on choices you made throughout the game.
  • Deus Ex Invisible War had four endings for four parties. One could argue nuclear winter, or starting a genocidal, technophobic, fascist regime are the bad endings, the other two force their idea of a perfect society on the world. Thus, while the original created three endings, each with a bit of hope for a brighter tomorrow.
  • Deus Ex Human Revolution had four endings chosen by a push of a button that would explain to the world why the augmented population was going insane, or one that would kill yourself and everyone aboard the station you were on. Interestingly, The Stinger shows that, no matter what you did, the original Deus Ex will happen.
  • Jade Empire did most of the above for well over 20 variations on its ending. It had different endings based on your Karma Meter, the romantic relationships between yourself and your followers, and their Karma meters as well. It also had hidden pasts for two characters resulting in about three or four different endings per follower on top of the three main endings for your own alignment (Good/Evil/Dead/In Love With Hero/Secret Past/Secret past and In love with Hero/Evil with a secret past whilst in love with the hero... and you get the idea). These epilogues were only played after the main ending cutscene, however, which was chosen from 3 possibilities depending on whether the main character was good/evil/an idiot.
  • Live a Live has no less than four endings, three of which are bad, and two versions of the good one. (The second bad one is triggered by the best battle choice box in gaming history: Fight / Pass / Item / Armageddon.)
    • In fact, half the individual chapters have multiple endings of their own, deciding the scenes in the best ending. Not to mention your character for the final chapter affects other details. It is basically a gestalt of multiple endings.
  • Recent games in the Fire Emblem series have a feature called "support", in which characters that spend a lot of time together in battle can have conversations which increase each of the supported characters' stats when they're near each other in battle. Certain preset supports change the ending, with the supported characters getting married and having children, and supports for the main characters will get an extra scene in the ending.
    • Contrasting this, if you let characters die during your playthrough, at the end of the game when you would hear about how they went on with their life, you get a "Character died during Chapter" message for unimportant cast members or "Character critically wounded during Chapter" message for main characters that aren't the Hero.
    • Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn have multiple endings as well, depending on whether Ike defeated the Black Knight or not in the first case, and a whole bunch of different factors in the second case. For example:
      • Whether you killed Pelleas or not
      • Whether Soren ever fought Micaiah and Pelleas or not
      • Whether you killed Lehran or not
    • Also, Fire Emblem: Sword of Seals has three possible endings: the standard ending, the complete ending, and the best ending. The standard ending can be obtained by simply defeating Zephiel. If all the sacred weapons have been obtained, two extra chapters are unlocked, leading to the complete ending, in which you defeat the dark priestess Idoun. The best ending occurs if Idoun is finished off by Roy using the Sword of Seals, and it shows Idoun's soul being saved.
  • Some of the Final Fantasy games feature this:
  • In Marvel Ultimate Alliance, once you've defeated Doctor Doom, the Watcher explains how the decisions you made throughout the game (mostly whether or not you completed the Sidequests) will affect the Marvel Universe for the better or worse.
    • Notable in that one quest results in a bad ending, no matter how you completed it. Mephisto offers you a Sadistic Choice between saving Jean Grey or Nightcrawler. Saving Jean results in Mystique murdering Charles Xavier for allowing her son to die, whereas choosing Nightcrawler causes Dark Phoenix to escape hell and come to seek revenge on the X-Men for abandoning Jean.
  • The PlayStation 2 game Shadow of Destiny had five different endings (actually six—two of them have the same ultimate result, but achieve it in different ways), determined by the choices you made at certain junctures and whether or not you'd witnessed certain missable events. Each ending filled in different details of the overarcing plot, so it was necessary to play to all five of them to get the full picture of what was going on. Upon having seen all five of the endings, a new sixth (seventh) ending became available.
    • There are actually two extra endings, one is the happiest possible ending and one is happy but leaves some unresolved issues. The first involves the hero helping create the Elixer of Life instead of releasing Homunculus, thereby healing Dr. Wagner's wife. The other ending involves removing the Homunculus from existence via a temporal paradox, but Dr. Wagner doesn't get to heal his wife. Both endings still achieve a similar result: without Homunculus setting his plans into motion, underlying reasons of the story never come to pass, and Eike no longer exists because Wagner never wished for eternal youth.
  • The Suikoden series of games use these. The Good Ending invariably requires that you find and recruit all 108 possible allies, possibly among other requirements; some even have INCORRECT allies to recruit to add Fake Difficulty to this task.
  • Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines has several endings, depending on which faction you decide to side with during the final stages of the game. Two of those endings also have alternate branches depending on your Humanity Score.
  • The Elder Scrolls series managed to dodge the need to stick with just one ending for the plot with Daggerfall, by later stating that the reality-warping powers of the Numidium that everyone was fighting for made all the endings happen, with two possible exceptions (it remains unclear whether the Underking earned the death that he sought, and in-game sources suggest intervention by divine agents made the King of Worms at least not entirely a god). On the other hand, Sentinel, Daggerfall, Wayrest, and Orsinium all simultaneously expanded over the smaller territories of the Iliac Bay region, while the Empire ended up with more control over the four newly-formed counties than it possessed when the region was more divided.
    • The Guardian Heroes series managed to dodge the need to, as well. This time, not by choosing all of the endings, but none of them. The "ending" that's the kick-off for Advance Guardian Heroes is loosely based on one of the endings from the first game, but redoes it as a bad ending; a variation that doesn't exist in the original game, which simply doesn't have any bad endings, just several, very different good ones.
  • Fighting/rpg hybrid Legend of Legaia has 4 endings based on what the hero chooses to do with his life after the Final Battle with the Big Bad.
  • The Star Ocean RPGs feature this prominently.
    • In the first Star Oean, the way the main character reacts with the other characters affects his Relationship Values with them, which in turn affect the way the story unfolds and which of the the Multiple Endings the player gets.
    • Star Ocean: The Second Story has 87 ending sequences that are primarily used as resolution and are determined by how the various characters relate to each other. Because you have up to 8 characters, you will see 4-8 of these sequences during the endings (depending on how many characters are paired up with others). In addition, the beginning of the game gives the player the option of choosing to play as either Claude or Rena (the two protagonists) giving a different point-of-view for each choice.
    • This is a common trope in the Star Ocean series in general, only averted with the fourth game.
  • For a linear tactical RPG, Fallout Tactics probably did pretty well with no less than four endings, not counting if the main character dies:
    • The 'standard' ending: The player destroys the Calculator. The Brotherhood struggles in the following years, but survives and eventually prevails.
    • The 'good' ending: A character who has made mostly moral choices merges with the Calculator. The Brotherhood prospers under their benevolent hand, and so too does the Wasteland.
    • The 'evil' ending: An immoral or... pragmatic character merges with the Calculator. Together, they create a feared, but fair and efficient, police state, ruled solely by the Calculator's ruthless mind.
    • The 'what the hell?' ending: General Barnaky merges with the Calculator. The Brotherhood is made more powerful, but mutants and ghouls are discriminated against, until a rebellion of both oppressed mutants and ghouls and sympathetic humans rises against the Brotherhood. It is doomed to fail. The Brotherhood survives, as does the player character.
  • The Breath of Fire video game series tends to have a "main" ending and several "secret" endings. The first game has an extra (bad) ending where you defeat the final boss without revealing her true form first. The second game not only has a bad ending, it has a "best" ending which relies on an earlier boss fight. The third game also has a bad ending, and the fourth game lets you side with the villain and fight your former party members.
  • The Geneforge series of games by Spiderweb does this pretty well. For each game, there are at least half a dozen different endings, depending on which faction you completed the main quests for, who you betrayed or killed, and various other actions through the course of the game (such as how many crazy-inducing augmentation canisters you used). However, there's only one canon ending per game, since the next game has to have a definite starting point.
    • The first three somewhat glossed it over, leaving the assumption that the choice made at the end of the previous games weren't so relevant to the beginning of each game. The last considered the 'stalemate' ending of the fourth to be canon, a compromise which also happened to be a fan favorite.
    • Also note that this is one of the games where most of the endings suck. For instance, in the first game, your only chance at a traditional "good" ending is to kill the villain and destroy the Geneforge without ever using a canister. Alternately, you can use canisters, but destroy the Geneforge anyway. Your people will be saved, but the canisters permanently mark you as no longer fully human, and you're left financially rewarded but rejected and friendless. A couple of the other endings allow for your personal survival at the expense of your entire society, and most of the rest kill you and lead to a bloody war.
  • Planescape: Torment has five endings, ranging from bittersweet to downright depressing. The main effect—the immortal player character finds out how to die—is retained for all of them; the rest of it mostly deals with what happens with him afterwards, and if your NPC friends survive.
    • Not to mention the Nonstandard Game Over endings—one of which involves you accepting the position of Silent King once the advisor knows that you know he's dead—since this is a lifetime appointment, and you're immortal...
  • The Bard's Tale (the 2004 game, as opposed to the 1985 game) offers three endings: the Good Ending, the Evil Ending, and the Sod-You-Both-I'm-Going-To-The-Pub Ending. However, due to The Bard's status as an Antihero at best, The Evil Ending (where he becomes the Demon Queen Caleigh's consort) is the Happily Ever After ending.
    • Interesting that it had a Screw This, I'm Outta Here ending, because the lack of save games resulted in more than a few players choosing such an ending theirselves, rather than finish the thing.
  • Mass Effect has three endings, with a minor variation depending on which ending you chose and whether your Paragon or Renegade meter is higher. If you save the Council, humanity is given a seat on the council with either Anderson or Udina as the representative of Earth. If you deliberately let the Council die, humanity becomes the sole species of the Council, with either Anderson or Udina as Chairman, and if you choose to concentrate on Sovereign, which leads to the Council's death, your ending will be decided by your Karma Meter: If more Paragon, humanity will establish a new Council, with a human Chairman (either Anderson or Udina) leading a multi-species Council. If a Renegade, Udina will use your ruthlessness to lead humanity into ruling the galaxy with an entirely human Council.
    • Mass Effect 2 has a few dialogue changes based on how you played the first one, and minor characters reappear.
      • As of late, Bioware has said they might consider allowing something to be imported for the everybody-dies ending, though for obvious reasons it's unlikely to include much in the way of actual gameplay.
    • Being a game with a heavy emphasis on player choice, even the dungeons in Mass Effect 1 can have slightly different endings depending on what order you tackle them in and the choices you make in each dungeon. A good example is in Noveria, where the boss fight with Matriarch Benezia will play out slightly differently depending on whether or not you have Liara T'soni in your party, whether your brought her along with you, and whether or not you choose to save or wipe out the rachni. You also get an extra cutscene if you bring Wrex and decide to save the rachni, where he chews you out for saving an obviously evil bug race that the krogan dedicated themselves to wiping out years ago. And all that is just in the final act of one dungeon. Let's not get started on Virmire...
      • The ending of ME2 can literally range anywhere from Everybody's Dead, Dave to the Golden Ending due to the absolutely deadly nature of the suicide mission. In addition, there's keeping the Collector Base or not, sticking with Cerberus or not, the implications of not doing certain loyalty missions, particularly Samara's which has your ending leave an immoral serial killer on the loose, etc. Let's face it, the Mass Effect series and its game importing power take multiple endings Serial Escalation.
    • Interestingly, No Canon for the Wicked could be considered to be inverted—if you start a new character in Mass Effect 2, he/she will have made all the bad choices (Wrex died, the council died, Shepard chose Udina rather than Anderson, the Rachni were wiped out -- the only highly significant one that may turn out 'as expected' is that Shepard will save Kaiden if female and Ashley if male). This led to many people starting from Mass Effect 2 to either import someone else's character with the desired decisions, or use a save editor to create the character they want. As discussed on Cutting Off the Branches, some fans speculate this is a sneaky way of encouraging players to play the first game instead of jumping into the sequel blind. On the other hand. the Play Station 3 version, due to the first game never being released for that system, includes an interactive comic book that allows the players to make decisions about major events.
  • Mass Effect 3 has three basic endings, details of which vary to some degree depending on the player's Readiness rating. These are "Destroy" (annihilating the Reapers along with all other synthetic life in the galaxy), "Control" (mind-controlling the Reapers and calling them off) and "Synthesis" (fusing organics and synthetics into a new hybrid-form). When the game was first released, these had many similarities, mostly in that the mass relay network blows up, Shepard dies, and the Normandy crashes on a jungle planet. This was not well received by fans. A DLC was released which revised the endings, having the mass relays be damaged instead of destroyed and allowing Shepard to survive a Destroy ending if your military strength was high enough. It also added a fourth ending, "Refusal" (Shepard refuses to use the Crucible and the Reapers win, though they're defeated in the next cycle. Each ending has further variations depending on your choices, such as whether your Shepard is Paragon or Renegade.
  • Dragon Age: Origins had four endings: "The Ultimate Sacrifice" (the Warden dies after slaying the Archdemon), "A Dark Promise" (Everybody Lives, but Morrigan gives birth to a Gray Warden's son who may or may not be The Antichrist), "Warden-Commander" (Alistair slays the Archdemon and dies), and "Redeemer" (the Warden spares Teyrn Loghain's life, who kills the Archdemon and dies). There are also a myriad variations in the text-only epilogue, depending on a handful of choices you've made throughout the game.
    • The Expansion Pack Awakening had two endings, but with major variations: "Amaranthine's Last Hope" (the Warden-Commander saves the city of Amaranthine from Darkspawn, but the Vigil's Keep is destroyed) and "Keeper of the Vigil" (the Warden-Commander saves the Keep, but Amaranthine is burned to the ground). One variation was that combining the first ending with the "Enduring Vigil" Achievement meant that neither the city, nor the fortress ever fell, making it the Golden Ending. The second variation was whether the Architect is killed or spared.
    • Dragon Age II has two endings: Mage (Hawke sides with the mages, starts a revolution, and skips town), and Templar (Hawke sides with the Templars, crushes the Kirkwall mage rebellion, and is crowned Viscount). Regardless of your choices, however, the overall outcome of the game is always an all-out war between Mages and Templars across Thedas no later than three years after the ending, and Hawke ultimately disappearing (with love interest, if there was one).
  • Lands of Lore II had a Good ending and an Evil ending, depending on choices the player makes in the game. This game is one of the few cases where the Evil path is actually preferable—it allows you to skip one of the most difficult and annoying parts of the game.
  • In the Chinese PC fan made game Fullmetal Alchemist: Bluebird's Illusion, there's a choice of 4 possible endings depending on what you've done during the game and where you've been, the most famous being Edward becoming the homunculus Pride.
  • Odin Sphere has several different endings. The Armageddon happens in all of them, but some cross the line from heartbreaking into downright sadistic.
  • Valkyrie Profile is a bit odd. It's possible (but not easy) to get a standard Game Over. You can get the "C" ending by directly working against the instructions you're given, and the "B" ending by following them. But in the absence of a guide, I challenge you to get the "A" ending. Hell, I challenge you to prove that the "B" ending isn't the "A" ending!
    • Odds are good that there are players who figured it out on their own through sheer testing and playtime, just because the "B" ending is so completely unsatisfying.
    • The second game left out multiple endings, but the third game brought them back in, with your ending dependent on how often and how much you used the Destiny Plume. Spamming the Plume too much results in the worst ending, where you get your ass whipped by Freya, while not using it at all in the entire game (save for the one in the tutorial) results in the best ending, where you fight Hel's hound, and obliterate it, saving your own soul. You need to get all but the worst ending in order to enter the Seraphic Gate.
  • Like Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Front Mission 3 had multiple completely different paths through the game—two, this time. And like Fate of Atlantis, the branching point was absurdly well-hidden, hinging entirely on whether or not you chose to go to a certain location during the prologue segment.
  • Vandal Hearts II has six different endings (two of which were minor variations on two of the others). Only one really counted as the "good ending", and acquiring it definitely came under Guide Dang It territory.
  • Radiata Stories has two endings which depend entirely on one choice about midway through the game. One is a Downer Ending and the other is Bittersweet Ending, at best.
    • They're both arguably bittersweet.
  • Parasite Eve:
    • The first game has two different endings, and it's difficult to tell which one is officially canon. The standard ending for beating the game shows Aya and her friends watching the play from the game's start, when everyone in the audience gets glowing pink eyes, due to the mitochondria acting up. Aya rises up from her seat and the camera cuts to the stage to show the whole audience with glowing eyes. The alternate ending is obtained when you beat the Bonus Boss, which shows Aya reverting back to normal (losing her powers) and just walking away.
    • Parasite Eve 2 has three different endings based on what events you trigger during the game. The standard ending shows a black screen with the President talking to his aide over the events of the end of the game. The good ending shows an extended version of this with the President and his aide in the picture as they also discuss on what to do with the mole they sent. The best ending shows various artworks of the characters and what has happened to each one of them. After the credits here, Eve and Aya visit the Museum of Natural History to see some exhibits when they see a mysterious figure near the doors behind them. It is presumed to be Kyle.
  • Sweet Home has five endings. The ending you get is determined by how many members of your group are still alive at the end. The 'best ending' is actually a The End - or Is It? ending, while the rest are more bittersweet than downers.
  • In Phantasy Star Portable there are three endings you can get depending on what you say when you're with or even to Vivienne. The bad ending involves Vivienne sealing the Hive from the inside, leaving Helga to escape to later arrive at GUARDIANS HQ with Howzer. The neutural ending involves the above, but Vivienne ends up taking Helga with her, leaving the Player Character to be suspended (which is treated more as a vacation). And finally, the good ending has Vivienne sealing Helga inside of the Hive. However, this leads to both Vivienne and the Player Character being discharged from the GUARDIANS, turning this into a Bittersweet Ending.
  • Dark Messiah of Might and Magic has four endings, the one you get based on two forks. The obvious one is at the very end of the game, where you decide what to do with the Skull of Shadows, but the not-so-obvious one is tied to two optional quests; failing/neglecting to do either one locks you into one pair of endings (presumably the bad endings), but doing both gets you a different pair of endings and the ability (skills pending) to use +7 Holy-Attributed Weapons (which will pretty much be your weapons of choice for the remainder of the game). The catch? You lose Xana and your demon form.
    • Might and Magic VII had two, based on a mid-game choice. The good ending, in which the colony's connection to an interstellar Portal Network is repaired was probably canon, but the evil ending, in which the Heavenly Forge is repaired, allowing the evil guys -- which include your group -- to outfit their armies with blasters and other technological wonders was intended to be canon, before backlash amongst part of the fandom made the developers alter their previous plans for Armageddon's Blade.
  • The Shin Megami Tensei series is known for featuring multiple endings.
    • Megami Tensei II for the Famicom has two possible endings, depending on some choices the player makes during the game.
    • The endings (Law, Chaos and Neutral) in Shin Megami Tensei I and Shin Megami Tensei II depends on the Silent Protagonist's alignment and his choices in who to side with.
      • Incidentally, the Law and Chaos endings both suck royally, and the neutral one isn't much better. This has since become a hallmark of the series.
    • Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne has 5 endings selected upon your actions before entering the final dungeon, based on who you've allied with, and in the US version whether or not you completed the bonus dungeon prior to entering. This actually affects more than just the ending, as it also affects the bosses you'll need to fight. There are total of 4 bosses you can fight in the final dungeon, but depending on your actions, you might be able to skip one of them.
      • If you allied with Chiaki, then you'll still have to fight her, due to her "strong rules all" philosophy, as well as Isamu and Hikawa before facing the final boss.
      • If you allied with Isamu, he'll be defeated prior to entering, so you won't have to fight him; however, you'll have to fight Chiaki and Hikawa and then fight the final boss.
      • If you allied with Hikawa, he'll allow you to pass without fighting him, but you'll need to fight Chiaki and Isamu before fighting the final boss.
      • If you allied with none of them (by either rejecting all of them or trying to ally with more than one of them), then you'll have to fight all three of them. Also, the ending you get depends on how you responded to a certain character's questions earlier. If you responded with fear, then you won't fight the final boss, and you'll get the worst ending where nothing changes.
      • If you do the above but answered with courage, then you'll also fight the final boss and upon winning get the good freedom ending.
      • If you completed the Amala Labrynth and became a full demon, then you'll be forced out of any alliance you may have had and need to fight Chiaki, Isamu, and Hikawa as well as the original final boss. After that, you'll need to fight a new final boss after the original one.
    • Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey have your typical Law, Neutral, and Chaos ending, depending on the MC's alignment and alignment-changing dialogue choices.
    • The original Persona has four endings: a good and a bad ending for both the normal plot and the Snow Queen Quest.
      • Normal Path: Which ending you get depends on whether or not you answer certain questions correctly. Get any of said questions wrong, and you get a bad ending at the moment of the revelation. Get them all right, and the game continues to the final boss and Good Ending.
      • Snow Queen Quest: The only way to get the bad ending is to try to proceed past a certain point in the game without having enough of the mirror shards picked up throughout the game. Since most players would most likely try to get all the mirror shards, this can be difficult. Naturally, the good ending happens if you do get enough mirror shards.
    • Persona 3 forces the player to make a difficult choice: it turns out your friend Ryoji is the unwilling harbinger of the Big Bad, Nyx, who he claims is totally unstoppable. Ryoji offers to let you kill him, saying that if you do this before midnight on New Year's Eve, your memories of the impending apocalypse will be erased and you can live out what little time you have left free from the painful burden of knowing the end of humanity is coming. If you choose to kill him, your characters get to live three months as ordinary high school students without a care in the world. The final shot is of you happily and unknowingly singing karaoke with friends, a split second before Nyx wipes out all life on Earth. Choose not to kill him, and the game continues on into January, leading up to an eventual confrontation between your party and Nyx.
      • The bad ending may also count as a Nonstandard Game Over, since this choice does NOT happen at the end of the game. If you choose not to kill Ryoji, the game will continue for a while longer.
    • Persona 4's multiple endings were designed, clearly, by a true sadist, and operate like peeling the layers off of an onion: First you get the standard-type moral choice you get in most multiple endings. Get revenge by murdering the murderer, or hand him over to the police, knowing he won't be convicted. The best choice is to stall for time, because he's not actually the murderer. The third bad ending can be avoided only if you can guess the true murderer in three tries, with very little evidence. The second-best ending then tries its damndest to convince you that it's actually the best ending possible. Only a series of totally counterintuitive actions will lead you to the true puppetmaster, the true final battle, and the real best ending.
    • Devil Survivor has five main endings, most of which hinge on what the player decides how to handle the threat of demons, and who to align with. With varying results. Note that it is easier to categorize some of the endings by the standard Law/Chaos alignment of SMT rather than Good/Bad. To elaborate:
      • Chaos: You become demon overlord by teaming up with Naoya/Cain and/or Kaido, and proceed to fight God, while humanity huddles in a corner avoiding all conflict. Humanity is free but is constantly under threat of annihilation.
      • Law: You become the world's messiah by joining Amane, and have the Demons serve God, and kill anyone who opposes your system. Humanity is preserved but all freedom is taken away.
      • Neutral (Star of Hope): You send ALL demons back to where they came from with Haru's song, giving up the power of Bel but freeing humanity from supernatural threats forever. This is the most difficult ending to acquire and survive, through.
      • Neutral (Silent Revolution): You manage to control all of the demons with the Server with Atsuro's hacking, causing a new technological revolution that turns Japan into a superpower.
      • Bad (And the one you can get by default): You run away by listening to Yuzu's (poor) advice, and by doing so get the whole world killed. "What you found outside was no different from what you ran away from. And the only angels that could have stopped this were killed by your own hands."
      • Nonstandard Game Over: You escape on day 6, and angels descend and remove free will.
    • The Overclocked remake adds an extra day to three of these endings, allowing for a more detailed ending which, against SMT tradition, are pretty much positive.
      • Chaos/Good: You refuse to kill any humans as you drive out the angels, sending them back to heaven after defeating Metatron. You then head to the demon world alone to raise an army against God. Notable in that it is the only ending where you can get all 10 potential party members.
      • Chaos/Evil: You cut down everyone who stands in your way and drive the angels out. Before raising your army against God, you use your demons to subjugate humanity to become the ruler of two worlds. In the process, you lose all your friends except for Naoya, Kaido, and a corrupted and broken Atsuro.
      • Law: You start enforcing the will of God, and in the process can prove to God that even people He (or his angels) declares irredeemable can actually be redeemed. You then stop Japan's creator god from destroying Japan, and in the process you set Naoya/Cain on the path to potential redemption.
      • Less Bad: You escape from the lockdown, finding out that your families have been captured by the government, and angels are starting to try and assert control over mankind. Wanting to fix everything, you head back into the lockdown where you defeat Belberith to potentially stop the influx of demons, and (optionally) help the Devas restore the barrier between the human and demon worlds. You essentially spend the rest of your life helping fix the mess, but if you fail to restore the barrier, then demon attacks stay a regular occurrence within Tokyo.
    • Devil Survivor 2, following the first game, also offers five endings and one Golden Ending. Upon and after fighting the Final Boss who's been trying to destroy the world:
      • Law: You ally with Ronaldo Kuriki and convince Polaris to bring a world of equality, where everybody works for the benefit of everyone.
      • Chaos: You ally with Yamato Hotsuin and convince Polaris to being a world ruled with meritocracy (a mild case of Social Darwinism), where those with skills and talents prosper and the rest are weeded out.
      • Neutral take 1: You ally with Daichi and convince Polaris to restore the world, bringing you back to the time before the events of the game start, i.e. pressing the Reset Button.
      • Neutral take 2: You ally with Daichi and decide to kill Polaris, freeing humanity from its control and threat but also leaving you with a world already badly ravaged by Polaris.
      • Neutral take 3: You ally with Al Saiduq and decide to kill Polaris and have Al Saiduq replace it as the world's god and create a new world.
      • Golden Ending: You ally with Daichi and convince Polaris to restore the world without hitting the Reset Button.
  • The ending of Tales of Symphonia changes depending on whoever is at the top of your Relationship Values. The sequel, naturally, cuts off a branch, but it manages to only make one ending impossible. Zelos is still alive, you see.
    • Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World has 3 endings: The Best Ending, The Good Ending, and the Bad Ending. You get the Best Ending by Getting both Ignus' and Tonitrus' Cores and losing to Lloyd and Marta and involves Emil splitting from Ratatosk and returning to Earth to live a normal life. You get the Good Ending by losing Ignus and/or Tonitrus to Lloyd and involves Emil/Ratatosk and Richter staying in the Ginnungagap. You get the Bad ending by winning the fight against Lloyd and Marta and involves Emil killing himself because he injured Marta. The Bad Ending is pretty much a Nonstandard Game Over.
  • Girls Love RPG Embric of Wulfhammers Castle is built on its multiple endings, most of them implying different truths about the world setting and the actual events of the narrative; unique in that getting most endings doesn't actually end the game—the credits roll, but the player can choose to return to the point just before the last ending they got. Characters lampshade this, and at one point someone says she doesn't accept anything as being true unless she encounters it three times.
  • The Witcher mostly comes down to which faction you side with in the end: the Scoia'tael, the Order, or yourself.
  • Radiant Historia plays with this interestingly. In most of the "Nodes" in each of the two histories, it is possible, through certain actions (some less obvious than others), to screw things up so badly that you get "treated" to a (oftentimes horrific and/or tragic) BAD END before being booted to the previous Node to try again. The final ending will also change depending on which sidequests were completed.
  • The German RPG-Maker Game Vampires Dawn had five different endings, depending on whether or not The Hero had a high humanity score and how nice he was to his would-be Love Interest. The fifth ending depended on whether or not a certain sidequest was finished and was basically a Sequel Hook version of the Good/With Love Interest ending, where the Final Boss finds a way to revive himself. It was made the canon ending in the sequel.
    • Vampires Dawn 2 had six endings. One for good, one for evil, and that for each of the three difficulty levels. In a bizarre inversion of Easy Mode Mockery, the endings tended to walk down more and more to the cynical side of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism as difficulty increased, with the Good/Easy ending being so happy to the point of appearing like a Fix Fic, while the Good/Difficult ending was downright depressing (actually, most endings were. Good/Easy is the only one where none of the four main characters die, for that matter). However, the Evil/Difficult ending was a Crowning Moment of Awesome, featuring The Hero soloing and backstabbing EVERYONE, then travelling back in time to prevent him ever becoming a vampire, then followed by The Reveal.
  • Venetica has two endings depending whether Scarlett, through dialogue options, fought for either revenge (good ending) or personal power (bad ending).
  • The Ar tonelico series has this, partially owing to its Dating Sim hybrid nature. For instance, the first game has seven endings based on which girl you choose and certain choices that will end the game early.
  • Hanako Games specializes in multiple endings. Cute Knight and its sequel Cute Knight Kingdom have twenty or thirty endings apiece, mostly depending on your job, sin level and the amount of adventuring you did, although there are a couple of "special endings" like marrying a prince or becoming a mermaid. Charm School has about twenty different endings for each of the three main characters, depending on which classes they took and whether they had a good or bad attitude at the end of the game. Magical Diary - Horse Hall has five or six major endings to your year at wizard school, and they've also got several dating sims.
  • Dark Souls has two different endings based on what the player does after defeating the Final Boss.


Video Games: Shoot'Em Up

  • Star Fox Command features no less than 9 endings.
  • In Giga Wing, completing the first 6 stages normally nets a Downer Ending in which your character(s) sacrifice themselves to destroy the Medallion. If, on the other hand, you complete the first 6 stages on a single credit, you proceed to a 7th stage, which consists entirely of the final battle between you and the Perfect Run Final Boss; defeating him will net you a better ending, regardless of how many continues you use on this stage.
  • In Rez, losing to Eden, the boss of the fifth and final area in the game, has her dissolving, presumably shutting down the network with her, yielding you the worst ending. Should you manage to defeat her, you'll see the real ending, and how much of it you see depends on what percentage of the area's enemies you destroyed.
    • And to get the full ending, you need to defeat her while still in the Final Form (which means taking no damage at all during Stage 5).
  • In R-Type Delta, one can get a Bad End by choosing the sluggish R-13. Doing so also nets you a Sequel Hook.
  • R-Type Final has several endings that are unlocked via New Game+: One can either destroy the Bydo core in the normal ending, get turned into a Bydo, or travel forward in time to, uh... Set Right What.. Will Go Wrong... maybe?.
  • Touhou is swimming in this trope. Every shot-type (between one and three for each character, and between two and four characters depending on the game) has its own good and bad (generally achieved by beating the final boss after continuing) endings. Imperishable Night added normal endings as well.
  • In the Hunt plays with this:
    • Beat the game with two players, and both players are forced to fight each other for no apparent reason. If one player succeeds in destroying the other, he/she becomes the new leader of The Empire. If time runs out, both submarines sink to the bottom of the sea.
    • With one player, get to the final form of the final boss without using any continues, and you get a bad end where your submarine fails to Outrun the Fireball. Use up more than one credit before you get to it and you get the good ending. Yes, this game gives you a bad end for playing well.
  • Razing Storm normally ends at Stage 4, after taking down the huge skull battleship. However, you can also end your game on Stage 3 by allowing the missiles at the end of the stage to destroy the bridge your squad is on. However, the game tries to keep it positive with your squad coming out of the wreckage unharmed and acknowledging that they still completed their mission (which was to assassinate the Big Bad in Stage 3-1).
  • The unreleased shooter Chimera Beast has a weird twist on this trope. Completing the game properly will give you the staff roll and the "bad" ending, saying that because of you, Earth is doomed to be eaten by the eponymous Chimeras. Lose against the final boss and you get the "good" ending, but no staff roll.
  • Hellsinker features many endings.
  • Syvalion has over one hundred different endings based on various factors as you play.
  • Cannon Spike has, besides the two characters, guest characters from games. The hidden ones and Mega Man from the series of the same name and BB Hood from Darkstalkers 3. Each character has a ending as does 2P mode, but BB Hood's endings in 2P mode is somewhat different; beat the game with one of the two players playing as BB Hood, and BB Hood will beat up the other character and boot him/her down the Life Saving tube, and the ending plays as if it was 1P mode. If Mega Man is selected, then BB Hood, BB Hood does not beat up Mega Man.
    • One of the 2P endings had Simone and Cammy getting attacked by Kabuki, and Simone is instructed by Cammy to get out of the base, but Simone wants to fight Kabuki and instructs Cammy to get out of the base, and Simone and Cammy argue while Kabuki attacks. Another 2P ending did away with the base completely, and only showed Shiba and Cammy at a open street, and Cammy wants to go shopping, and Shiba protests that his board is not a shopping cart, but says, "Oh well... Never mind..."
  • In Thwaite, the culprit is never discovered if no buildings ever get blown up.

Video Games: Strategy

  • The Command & Conquer series usually has 2 or more sides to play as with different endings. When a sequel comes out, the series developers usually choose the good side as victor and use that for the story.
    • Tiberium Wars may have very well broken the mold, as the story and timeline of each side is intricately interwoven to form something that's relatively coherent.
    • The expansion pack to Tiberian Sun, called Firestorm, is also unusual in that both the GDI and NOD campaigns are theoretically both canon, as both sides are fighting against a common enemy. In actuality, however, there are still a few discrepancies between the two endings, and the GDI one is considered definitive.
    • In addition, it's commonly believed that the Command & Conquer universe as a whole branches out into either the Red Alert or Tiberium games depending on who wins in the first Red Alert game. This comes from the fact that the first Red Alert was meant as a prequel to the original series, and there are various hints in that direction in its cutscenes. However, due to later revelations, this no longer makes sense; for example, GDI couldn't come into existence if the Soviets won, as its precursor organization, NATO, wouldn't exist.
  • Pikmin has three endings: The Good End where you complete the primary objective and escape the planet with the three Pikmin Onions in tow, a Good+ End where a number of differently-colored Onions join the mix, and a somewhat disturbing but strangely cute Bad End where the main character dies and the Pikmin bring him back as one of their own.
  • This was featured more than a few times in the Wing Commander series.
    • If your home base is destroyed but you survive, you're greeted, in the first game, with a message that you're stranded, left to drift endlessly in the void, before being sent back to start again.
    • In Wing Commander III, you could, by failing certain missions, trigger a series of hopeless missions that eventually led to an escalating fight against harder and harder odds until the nigh undefeatable dreadnought. When you die, a cutscene shows the death of the TCS Victory by Ramming Always Works a Kilrathi dreadnaught, and get to see a Cutscene with a conquered Earth. Eject instead of die, and you're shown being tractored into Prince Thrakhath's dreadnaught, where you're given a choice of responses to his victorious gloating. Both are fatal, but the death details differ.
      • Depending on your earlier choice, when presented with the option of kissing Rachel, Flint, or no one, you're shown a different winning Cutscene of you/Blair in a shuttle returning to Earth accompanied by your choice.
    • In Wing Commander IV, if you screw up enough times and eject, early in the game, you're pretty much fired by Tolwyn. Ejecting after choosing to join the Border Worlds leads to your being captured and executed by Confed as a traitor.
      • Even getting all the way to the end of the game, if you fail to convince the Senate that Admiral Tolwyn has crossed the Moral Event Horizon, you get the Traitor Ending, plus a cutscene of war breaking out between The Terran Confederation and The Union Of Border Worlds. (The "Bad Bad Ending")
      • Successfully prevent war from breaking out, and you get two other possible endings, based either on whether you made a series of morally questionable choices, or who had the higher morale between two of your wingmen (The Blood Knight and The Wide-Eyed Idealist) by the end of the game: Either your character is shown to eventually become a heavy-handed Admiral brutally putting down a rebellion (The "Bad Good Ending"), or retiring to become an easy-going instructor pilot (The "Good Good Ending"). Given that the player's character is played by Mark Hamill, the Admiral ending is from time to time referred to as "The Dark Side Ending".
    • Wing Commander Secret Ops gave you three different endings: win-win, with the command ship being destroyed before activating the accretion device; win-lose, where the device is destroyed, defeating the aliens, but screwing up the Sirius system for centuries to come; and lose-lose, failing to destroy either the device or the control ship, resulting in an ending comm from the captain of the Cerberus, telling you about a Suicide Pill located under your seat.
  • Luminous Arc 2 has two Dating Sim-like endings. Throughout the game, depending on your dialogue choices, Roland can be paired off with either Althea or Fatima. The differences between the two endings are the unlucky girl fighting the party in a boss battle before departing to Ahrtana, who Roland will formed the Final Bond with and performing the ultimate spell against the Big Bad.
    • Luminous Arc 3 brings it back by having more options for Refi to be paired off with.
  • The Dawn of War: Chaos Rising campaign implemented different endings depending on the player's Corruption level, ranging from being hailed as the savior of the Chapter to going renegade and joining Chaos, as well as varying the identity of the traitor depending on their individual level of Corruption. A blatant example of Fake Longevity though, as the missions are identical regardless of Corruption and the endings are ultimately the same (victory over Ulkair and Angelos pledging to purge the traitors from their ranks).
  • The Deception series uses this trope.
    • Trapt. There are four possible endings. The first has Princess Allura/Alicia leaving the kingdom at the urging of Hertzog. Choosing to leave will require her to kill Jais, and she will live peacefully in another country... only to hear that a Devil apparently destroyed her kingdom. The second ending occurs if you choose to fight the Princess's handmaiden Rachel. This will result in the Princess murdering Rachel, being possessed by Malphas the Fiend, and going on to murder a magician named Mayate in a Curb Stomp Battle. If you choose not to fight Rachel, then Rachel will die by a falling rock and Malphas will be summoned, and the Princess will have to fight him. The third ending occurs if you lose to Malphas. Malphas will possess her, and Jais will accompany her, blissfully unaware that "she" is now Malphas. The fourth ending occurs if you win against Malphas. Malphas will apparently die, and the Princess and Jais go back to the castle. The Princess sits on her throne, now a Queen, while Jais goes to find survivors. He finds out that he and Allura/Alicia are apparently the only survivors, and a group of zombie warriors (who evidently were not affected by Malphus's death) prepare to attack him from behind. His fate is left to the player's imagination.


Video Games: Survival Horror

  • Every House of the Dead game has multiple endings. Usually one or two non-canon ones, a canon good/acceptable ending, and an apparently canon ending that alludes to plot points that, as of now, are still yet to be revealed.
    • 1: Sophie is either dead, alive or zombified. Obviously only one is possible, but since she's never mentioned again, we have no way of knowing (which probably was Sega's intention, though Sophie is implied to be alive by Lisa's presence in 3). 2: The normal ending is a plain 'ol group shot with the grateful citizens and your unhelpful allies. The "twist" ending has Goldman turned into a zombie (which we later learn really did happen). The "good" ending is just a little easter egg cameo from Thomas. No conflicts here. 3: One plot point, one "joke" ending (the only one in the series), and li'l Danny may or may not have joined the ranks of the undead. As this is the last game chronologically, it's hard to say what, if anything, is canon. 4: A plot point building off of the one in 3, an emotional eulogy from G, and two versions of Goldman's cryptic final message, one of which confirms the twist in 2; again, nothing contradicts any of the other endings or anything else we've seen.
    • Parodied in the spin-off Typing of the Dead. The different endings just have the villain jumping off the building with slight variations (flying like Superman, attached to a bungee cord), and the only thing that decides which ending you get is the answers to completely random questions at the end of the game.
  • The Silent Hill games. Silent Hill 2 was rare in that, rather than the ending being determined by a few specific choices made during the game or via a simple Karma Meter, the game tracked and judged your behavior throughout the game in several areas. For example, if you spent a lot of time fighting and running around with low health, you were more likely to get the ending in which the main character commits suicide; if you paid a lot of attention to a certain NPC and protected her from harm as much as possible, you were more likely to get the ending where you leave with her, and so on. Silent Hill 3 did this as well, but not to the same extent. Silent Hill 4 went back to the old "two important events with two possible outcomes each equals four possible endings" formula. Interestingly (considering the tone of the games), there is a difficult-to-obtain comedy ending in most of the titles. For example, in Silent Hill 2, the dog was behind it all.
  • The original Resident Evil 1 has seven different endings with additional variations in the Game Cube remake: two endings where only one of the two main characters (Jill or Chris) survive alone, an ending where only Jill and Chris survive, two endings in which one of the main characters escape with their partner (Jill with Barry or Chris with Rebbecca), and two "best endings" where Jill and Chris escape with either Barry or Rebbecca. According to the sequels, all four of the main heroes escaped the mansion, which is impossible to achieve in the game since Barry goes missing during Chris's game after the opening intro, while Jill never meets Rebbecca in her game.
    • Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3: Nemesis both have multiple endings as well, but the differences between them are really minor compared to the original game.
      • In RE2, the ending you get is determined by the order in which you play both characters' storyline. You can see the standard ending by completing the first half with Leon and then see the complete ending by finishing the second half with Claire or vice versa.
      • In RE3, the choices you make throughout the game will determine how the story will unfold, but ultimately there are only two endings that are barely different from each other. The standard ending has Jill and Carlos escaping on their own, while the second ending has Jill and Carlos escaping with the help of Jill's old partner Barry, who just happened to flying his helicopter near the area. The artwork on the result screen will change depending on which ending you get.
    • Resident Evil Outbreak has an absurd number of endings. Near the finale, you activate a machine which spits out a cure for the zombie virus, and which also can be used to kill the final boss. The ending you get is determined by how many you take with you or use on yourself. For each of 8 characters, there is a good ending: you escape the city with a zombie virus cure to save the world, a bad ending: You escape without a T-Virus cure and the zombies escape the city, and a really bad ending: You become a zombie in the escape chopper, causing it to crash. Further, each character has a "Partner Ending," where they stay in Racoon City doing something heroic before it is blasted into dust. In total, there are **28** possible ending cutscenes. In the sequel, File #2, there are nearly as many endings but now several of the levels have unique endings too.
  • Dead Rising has six endings: The worst ending ("F") occurs if you fail to complete a certain plot-related mission; "E" occurs if you fail to progress the plot and don't reach the heliport in time; "D" occurs if you're a prisoner of the special forces at the time limit; "C" occurs if you don't talk to Isabela at 10AM on the last day, but otherwise complete the plot and leave; "B" occurs if you fail to progress the plot but leave; and ending "A" requires the completion of all 8 cases, talking to Isabela at 10AM on the last day, and getting to the heliport at noon. Ending "A" unlocks "Overtime Mode," where Ed gets eaten, his chopper goes down, and Frank will turn into a zombie if he doesn't get some stuff for Isabela to stave off the transformation. Oh, and they have to leave via a tunnel packed shoulder-to-shoulder with zombies, fight off a prototype tank with a Jeep turret gun, and then Frank fights the special forces boss hand-to-hand on top of the tank while zombies mill around. Even after all that, Frank and Isabela are surrounded by zombies with no way out, fade to black. According to the ending epilogue, Frank escaped in one piece and managed to show the information to the world, and thanks to certain lines in the sequel, it can be assumed that Isabela survived as well.
  • In Amnesia the Dark Descent there's three endings depending on how the player finishes the final confrontation. If you allow the boss to escape then it's the bad ending. If you send Agrippa's head through the portal then it's the best ending (even though Daniel dies he's sent on to another "life"). If you just destroy the portal then it's the good ending and Daniel dies.
  • Clock Tower has this in spades. The first game has nine endings, the second ten (five for each character), and the third thirteen.
  • Haunting Ground has four endings: "Fortes Fortuna Juvat" - Fiona escapes Belli Castle with Hewie after Lorenzo is killed. Debilitas is still alive, but bows to Fiona before she leaves. "Ignis Aurum Probat" - Fiona and Hewie escape, but everyone else they encountered (including Debilitas) is dead. "Dona Nobis Pacem" - Fiona and Hewie escape thanks to a key given by Debilitas, as Lorenzo pleads for Fiona to not go. "Tu Fui, Ego Eris" is the worst ending - Fiona's poor relationship with Hewie causes him to die in the forest. With no one left to save her, she is captured by Riccardo and possibly raped. Fiona wakes up, but is now pregnant, Riccardo's wish fulfilled. She lets out a long, hollow (and freakin' creepy) laugh as the camera pans away from her...
  • Each of the Fatal Frame games have multiple endings. Usually, the more tragic ones are considered canon.
    • The first game had three endings: one gotten on Easy/Normal, where only Miku escapes, Mafuyu choosing to stay behind, one on Nightmare: both Miku and Mafuyu escape, and one on the Xbox where Kirie is reunited with her lover. Only the first one is canon.
    • Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly had four endings: one where Mio runs away, one gotten on the easier difficulties where Mio sacrifices Mayu to the Hellish Abyss, one for the harder difficulties, (Mio and Mayu both escape, but Mio is now blind), and another Xbox exclusive ending where Yae and Sae reunite and Mio and Mayu escape. The second ending is canon.
    • Fatal Frame III: The Tormented only has two endings. In the first one, only Rei and Miku are implied to have survived. The second ending requires a sidequest to be completed but has everyone surviving.
    • Fatal Frame IV: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse has two endings: one where Misaki's fate is not revealed and one gotten by beating the Hard difficulty where it's clear she survived.
  • The Suffering had three endings depending on the morality of your criminal inmate protagonist Torque on whether he was actually a good guy, a bad guy, or too neutral to be sorted. You also get Torque's family, the victims of his crime, giving appropriate comments during the final battle on what ending you'll probably get.
    • Good Ending: Torque was framed and his family was killed by the villain of the sequel.
    • Bad Ending: Torque did actually kill them, bashing his wife's head in, drowning his younger son in the bath, and throwing his older son out of the window.
    • Neutral Ending: Torque kills his wife... by accident. The older son sees this happen and goes insane, drowning his little brother in the bath and then committing suicide by leaping out of a window.
  • The first Dino Crisis has three different endings. In the last branching path in the game, the heroine Regina must choose between letting Dr. Kirk escape or accompanying a severely wounded Gail (her commanding officer) to capture him. In the former choice, the three heroes escape together, but they fail their mission for letting Dr. Kirk escape. In the second choice, Dr. Kirk is captured, but Gail succumbs to his wounds, who reveals before dying that the true objective of their mission was not the capture of Dr. Kirk, but the data disc he was carrying, which contains the research data of the Third Energy project. However, there's also a third alternative: Regina can leave Gail under Rick's care, only to go after Dr. Kirk by herself, allowing all four characters to escape. This is arguably the best of the three scenarios.
  • Each chapter of Corpse Party: Blood Covered has a few "Wrong End"s and a single "True End". Only by reaching the latter can the player continue on to the next chapter. The fact that these are called "True End"s rather than "Good End"s gives you an idea of the general tone of things.
    • The PSP version added a few new endings, including some Extra Ends which end the game off on the weirdest notes, where everything just seems to stop and focus on one character, then throw you back to the title screen to play the chapter again. To add to it, the sequel to the PSP version has the beginning of it's story based off of one of the final Bad Ends in Chapter 5.


Video Games: Visual Novels

  • Almost every Dating Sim ever, usually regarding whom your character ends up with. Some of the dodgier games even have a "Harem Ending", which allows your character to end up with them all.
  • Prevalent in the main works of the Nasuverse; all of them are Canon, considering the nature of The Verse. Various scenarios in the game are generally heroine-focused and mutually exclusive, and there are Good (happy), True (medium-happy to Tear Jerker), and Normal (outright depressing) Ends, depending on whether characters act in-personality or not, and what decisions they choose. There are also Bad Ends in the dozens, premature endings to the plot which may or may not result in death. Each Bad End will be followed by a comical, No Fourth Wall sequence where advice is given (and stupid choices are admonished) by various characters, including villains. Oddly enough, Bad Ends have a tendency to expand considerably on the Canon, to the point where the whole plot can only be figured out by seeing all of them.
    • Tsukihime has five heroine-focused scenarios and 9 endings total: 5 True Ends, 3 Good Ends, and 1 Normal End. Bad Ends range from being completely disabled to the infamous "eaten by a shark on the ninth floor of a hotel", followed by a "Teach Me, Ciel-Sensei!" session. Completing all Endings unlocks the "Eclipse" Epilogue where the protagonist meets with an old friend/teacher...
    • Fate/stay night has three different scenarios which branch out depending on several choices in the beginning of the story. The first route has a single True Ending, while the latter two have multiple endings that depend on your relationship with a specific character—one route (UBW) has a Good End and a True End (both rather optimistic), while the other (HF) has a True End (positive) and a Normal End (ungodly depressing). There are 40 numbered Bad Ends followed by a "Taiga Dojo" sequence that either gives advice to the player or admonishes you for getting a stupidly-obvious choice wrong. One dojo even criticizes the player for looking up the very specific steps needed to reach that dojo and purposely seeking it out. Each sequence gives a "stamp" which are collected to unlock extra bonus videos.
      • Oh, and also once you get every death stamp and every game ending, you unlock the continuation of the Fate Route ending, revealing it to be both a Good and True end (Shirou reunites with Saber in Avalon, letting them be together for eternity in what amounts to FSN's version of heaven.) Certainly a step up for the first Fate ending.
    • This is, however, subverted in Kagetsu Tohya. Very often they lead you to a situation that looks very much like it should be a Bad End, such as being eaten by a Jaguar in Arcueid's room (It Makes Sense in Context... wait, no it doesn't) or having your head pulled off. Yet these are actually all necessary parts of the continuing storyline. If you want to defeat your nightmare, Nanaya, you have to let him kill you a whole bunch. The next day simply starts like any other.
  • School Days is known for its more unique multiple endings compared to other visual novels. But when that's said, no one cares about the happy endings, this game is infamous & notorious for its bad endings in which someone will always get grotesquely killed some way or another. Otherwise, there's those orgy-crazed endings which make the main character look more of a douchebag than he already is...
    • The ending picked for the anime is worse than any of the bad endings, and comes directly as a result of Makoto acting like a Jerkass to pretty much everyone he was romantically involved with.
  • The Clannad Visual Novel twists the idea of Multiple Endings by making them PLOT POINTS. Majority of the ends reward you with Light Orbs, which allows you to unlock the After Story. Then, the game takes the cake and eats it by only enabling the True End once you've obtained every single other Light Orb in the game. Talk about Earn Your Happy Ending.
  • Both halves of the Muv-Luv Visual Novel (Extra and Unlimited) have endings for each heroine. Unlimited happens in a continuity very different from that of Extra. Alternative (the sequel game) reveals that, like Clannad above, each of the routes in both Extra and' Unlimited really happened (in alternate universes), and that, similar to Higurashi below, the protagonist has (due to a complicated "quantum causality" phenomenon) lived through all of the route-universes in Unlimited, and has memories of those of both Extra and Unlimited, though he is not able to recall everything except in brief flashes. Gamewise, this is implemented by Unlimited reading the savefile of Extra and displaying new content accordingly, and Alternative reading both Extras and Unlimiteds savefiles in turn to do the same thing.
  • Higurashi no Naku Koro ni: The multiple chapters are connected, but each one has its own ending that neatly wraps up the storyline. Every chapter happens during the weeks leading up to the same disaster, and as it turns out, it's a pseudo-Groundhog Day Loop involving alternate universes created by the local deity, who keeps pressing the Reset Button hoping that the one character who remembers what happened can find a way to prevent the cataclysm that keeps killing everyone in the village. Most of the endings range from Bittersweet Ending to soul-crushingly depressing, but each season finale culminates in a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming due to The Power of Friendship and unshakable determination.
  • Following Higurashi, Umineko no Naku Koro ni has multiple self-contained "episodes" in which things happen differently, but end in disaster for the characters involved. This time, the different episodes are different "what-if" scenarios set up by a Game Master, who exists in a "Meta World" along with "other selves" of the characters on the "game board" and witches. Events from across the episodes are used by the said "Meta-characters" in debating and arguing about the identity/ies of the culprit(s) behind the killings.
  • Yo-Jin-Bo has a total of eighteen possible endings, three for each bodyguard: the Good endings involve a final confrontation with the Big Bad and a Happily Ever After, usually with Sayori choosing to stay in the past to be with her chosen love interest, while the Bad endings involve Sayori being yanked back to the present, typically immediately after she and her love interest admit their feelings for one another. And then there's the "forgotten dream" ending, in which the guy simply leaves and Sayori wakes up in the present with only vague memories of the experience and a feeling that she has lost something.
  • This is actually mostly averted in Suika. The first chapter has one ending, the second chapter has one ending, the third has two, but only one appears to be canon. The fourth has multiple endings and a true ending when you've unlocked both of the best endings from it. This unlocks an alternate route in the second chapter focusing on Mie and Souji's Broken Ace personality.
  • There are seven heroines in Canvas 2, and each one has her own ending.
  • In Matches and Matrimony, there are seven unlockable endings in which the player character gets married to one of Jane Austen's heroes (or villains) -- and two in which she remains single.
  • Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors features 5-6 endings. They're all canon, but the true ending is more canon than the others.

According to sources, this will be more than doubled on the sequel, with 24 endings.

  • Kara no Shoujo has no real good ending and a lot of downer endings. There are only two or three endings that can really qualify as bittersweet... and the true ending is not really one of them.
  • A Profile has five endings, two each for Miku and Rizu and one for Miou, the last heroine. None of these are bad endings, and as a whole, are all rather optimistic.
  • Katawa Shoujo has a Good End and Bad End for each of the five girls, plus an extra neutral end for two of them (Rin and Hanako), and a Bad End you get at the end of Act 1 if you haven't managed to get one girl by the end. In this one, Hisao has a manly picnic with Kenji, gets drunk, and falls off the roof and dies. The other bad ends generally just involves the girl becoming angry/sad at Hisao and their relationship breaking apart... which, of course, makes them much more heartbreaking.
    • Lilly's bad ending is unique in that the game stops after a certain scene late in the route, when she says goodbye to Hisao and Hanako, instead of showing a scene you would not see otherwise. If, however, the player has made all the right decisions, the story continues until it reaches the good ending.
  • Frozen Essence has six paths to choose from, and each of them have both a Light End and a Dark End. The Light Ends generally have Mina being happily together with her love interest or at least being alive and reasonably happy, while the Dark Ends generally have her dying, being resealed, or being trapped in a very twisted relationship with her love interest. In addition, the Life path has three more endings: two are more like Non Standard Game Overs than anything else, but the third one happens to be the game's True End.
  • Winter Shard has eight endings: a Nonstandard Game Over early in the game, a "worst" ending where Frederone dethrones Krotus and rules the entire world with an iron fist, two variations of the "worst" ending where Frederone dethrones Krotus but isn't quite as ruthless as he is in the worst ending, a neutral ending where Frederone remains in Undying Loyalty to Krotus, a "better" variation of the neutral ending where Marliene joins Frederone in his Undying Loyalty, a "better" ending where Frederone and Rosetta are married, and a "true" ending that's the most conclusive but bittersweet one.
  • The Yarudora series, an interactive anime visual novel franchise by Sony initially released in 1998, had this trope as one of its big specialities. Each Yarudora game would sport lots of Endings, divided in 3 categories: Good (usually 3 to 5 ones), Normal (usually 3 to 5 ones too), and Bad (usually 17 to 20 ones; Yukiwari No Hana had 32'). This series, and its first game, Double Cast, in particular (due not only to the interactive anime style and the numerous gruesome bad endings, but also because Double Casts main heroine is ultimately revealed to have a Yandere Split Personality, were so revolutionary at the time, they would become a primary inspiration for the creators of School Days cited above.
  • Aoi Shiro has several different types of ending. Each in addition to the numerous bad ends where the protagonist Syouko dies or becomes possessed by the <<Sword>> each co-protagonist has two or three 'Normal Ends' where everyone survives but wind up parting ways and a 'Good Ending' where they are Syouko stay together or are re-united with the same pattern for the Grand Route involving all the main heroines together. There are also a handful of route independent 'Normal Ends' that cut the story short be leaving early.
  • Monster Girl Quest has unique bad endings for losing to each enemy, as well as more proper endings.
    • The ending of the second chapter has three endings, depending on the outcome of the final battle. The canonical one is to defeat Alice but refuse to kill her. Luka convinces Alice that her Heroic Sacrifice won't solve anything, and Ilias attempts to intervene only for Luka to rebel. Ilias then sends her armies to attack the world, kicking off the events of the third chapter. If you defeat Alice and choose to kill her, Ilias comes down, mocks Alice's dreams, and takes Luka to Heaven and rapes him. Then she destroys the world and remakes it, repopulating it with a new race of people who will obey her every whim. If you fail to defeat Alice, Alice seals Luka and herself in a force field that no one--including Ilias or even Alice herself--can ever break. Ilias shrugs and carries out the same plan as above, since with those two sealed away, there's no one to stop her. Alice and Luka, on the other hand, spend eternity making love.
    • The third and final chapter has many different endings. The canonical one, which is used by Monster Girl Quest Paradox, is to ignore the temptations of every other monster and marry Alice. Giving into temptation at any point results in Luka becoming the playthings of the monsters in question.
  • The second chapter of Monster Girl Quest Paradox has two endings, determined by whether you chose Ilias or Alice at the beginning of the game. If you chose Ilias, Sonya Chaos regains her consciousness, defeats Adramelech at the cost of suffering a mortal wound herself, and uses the last of her power to fix the world and copy an alternate version of herself to take her place in the party. If you chose Alice, Nuruko reveals her true power as the spirit of chaos, restores Sonya to her human form, banishes Adramelech, fixes the world and then returns to her usual self. Additionally, in Alice's ending you learn that Marcellus has killed Alice XV. In both endings, Sonya remains in the party but gains access to the Apoptosis race.


Video Games: Other

  • Another early example is Out Run; there are five goals one can make for, each with its own ending animation.
  • Star Wars-based games often allow you to choose the Light Side or the Dark Side of The Force, and give a different ending for each, though Word of God is that only the light-side endings are canon:
  • Drakengard has five endings. The first ending is considered canon and the sequel is based off of it. It's also the ending you have to get on the first playthrough. The second and third endings can be done in any order, and they mostly hinge on how quickly you complete one mission which precedes both. The fourth ending requires that you have all of the available party members, and the fifth ending requires that you've completed all other four endings and have collected every weapon in the game.
    • Drakengard's fifth ending is also the canon ending starting NIER's storyline. No, seriously. It was confirmed by Cavia itself.
  • The experimental online game I Wish I Were The Moon has eight endings (plus a secret one) depending on your placement of the people and the objects in the picture. The endings, ranked in rough order from unhappy to happy, are:
    • Tragedy: Drop either person into the water.
    • No Reason To Live: Put the boy on the bird.
    • If I Can't Have You: Put both people on the moon.
    • Lost Love: Put the boy on the boat.
    • Be Free: Put the girl on the bird.
    • Bring Me The Moon: Put the boy and girl on the bird or the boat, wait for the moon to move into the background, then move the moon to the boy.
    • Such A Pretty Sky: Put both the boy and girl on the boat, then repeatedly copy the shooting star in the sky.
    • I Am Your Moon: Put the boy on the boat and the girl on the moon.
  • Similar to the above-mentioned I Wish I Were The Moon, there's also The Majesty of Colors and its 5 endings based on how your Lovecraftian character interacts with the humans. If you kill at least one of them, you'll get Ending E if you defeat both the bombing boat and the submarine, Ending D if you defeat the bombing boat but get killed by the submarine, or Ending C if you get killed by the bombing boat. If you're friendly to them instead, you'll get Ending B if you don't save the child from being eaten by sharks or Ending A if you do save the child.
  • F-29 Retaliator, a flight sim, handles this rather oddly—you don't have to complete every mission to get to the end of the game. But, if you complete the minimum number, you have a nuclear war where your side loses and there is nuclear winter; if you complete the maximum number, you have a nuclear war where you side wins, but Mankind Has Lost (nuclear winter). If you complete somewhere between these two, Peace Is Declared.
  • The Code Geass Nintendo DS game features slight variations in its endings depending on which storyline you're playing and who you've recruited or antagonized. Notably, one can avert Euphemia's massacre simply by choosing not to go, earning a "Happy Ending, I guess", as C.C. puts it. As aside, you also get special endings if you perform Too Dumb to Live actions (such as Geassing people into killing you) which causes C.C. to berate you.
    • The game Lost Colors features a vast number of alternate endings; given that it's a Visual Novel, this should be no surprise. Most famously, the PlayStation 2-exclusive Blue Moon Festival opens up most of the show's female cast for romantic endings. Yes, even Nina and Nunnally.
      • Not to mention, one of the Bad Endings has you geassing Suzaku into joining the Black Knights. That doesn't sound bad, so what's the downside? Lelouch was actually planning to personally recruit Suzaku, so he gets pissed off at you and geasses you into a Convenient Coma. This is especially strange when considering in the Nintendo DS game, an alternate route has Lelouch recruiting Suzaku with this method (though reluctantly).
      • Another notable thing about the game is that in nearly all of the endings, Euphemia's massacre is averted completely, but unlike the Nintendo DS game, you get to see some more results of this action.
  • Several Humongous Entertainment children's games (e.g. the Spy Fox series) have an "okay" ending and a "good" ending.
    • In all three Spy Fox games, there are two possible endings. The sub-par ending plays if Spy Fox manages to thwart the villain but fails to bring them to justice. However, each game has a part where instead of instantly going to the ending, the player could make a quick decision to chase after the villain and play an extra step in the story. Accomplishing the extra part would show the full, high-accolade ending.
  • Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire has a better ending when you finish the game on the highest difficulty.
  • In Akrasia (if you plan to download the game, don't scroll further down that page, as there's a spoilery review below the download link and Akrasia is best played without any prior knowledge), you find yourself in a maze with pills to collect and a ghostlike creature to chase. The ending you get depends on how many pills you collect and how quickly you figure out how to escape the maze.
  • Indie game Virtual Silence has three possible endings. The point of the game is to attempt to train a mute boy to speak using a VR system. In the standard ending, the boy remains mute. To get this ending, fail any of the three challenges pre-endgame and succeed in the final challenge. In the good ending the boy becomes able to speak. To get this ending, complete all three challenges and succeed in the final challenge. In the bad ending, the VR machine kills the boy. To get this, fail the final challenge.
  • Colosseum: Road to Freedom has five endings, including a Golden Ending (although it's not quite as upbeat as you'd expect the good ending to be). Not surprisingly, doing the stated objective in the instructions, i.e. paying off your debt and walking away a free man, results in the shortest and most boring ending.
  • You Don't Know Jack: The Ride has a rather unbelievably bizarre application of this trope to a trivia game. Since The Ride was the first of the Jack games to not feature randomly-selected questions, the game knew when it had run out, and, in addition to the semblances of plot building up to "The Bottom", the game presented you with a video scene of the five hosts talking with each other, before they offered you a choice of what sort of ending you wanted.
  • The "Saw" videogame has two endings, the Freedom, and the Truth. All includes the canonical death of Detective Tapp.
  • The Youtube Game Howard Glitch has four endings.
    • Standard Ending: Fail a challenge or accept the reality that you are going to die.
    • Worst Ending: Embrace escapism all the way though the end.
    • Gainax Ending: Embrace escapism until you meet the ship's driver. Tell him to wake up so he can turn the ship around. This allows you to save the passengers from oblivion. Except not really.
    • Best Ending: Embrace escapism until you're asked if you want to save the passengers. You can't actually save them, but since you achieved enlightenment, you end up giving them comfort in their final hours.
  • Super Mario World had a subtly different version of the enemy role call for you at the end if you found all of the "exits", with the enemies taking their fall forms instead of their summer ones.
  • The Space Channel 5 series has a Bad Ending and a Good Ending depending upon if you hit the final 3 chus in the game. In the first game, the bad ending has the satellite for the station fall apart and Ulala groan as the show is cut off, and in the second game's bad ending, it blacks out, implying that Purge vaporized everyone in the arena, killing himself in the process.
  • Catherine has multiple endings depending on Vincent's Karma Meter.
    • Bad Katherine: Vincent asks Katherine to take him back, but she refuses.
    • Good Katherine: Katherine and Vincent plan on getting back together.
    • True Katherine: Katherine and Vincent get married in the Stray Sheep.
    • Standard Neutral: Vincent rejects both girls. He borrows some money from Boss and bets on a wrestling match. He loses the bet.
    • Good/True Neutral: Same as Standard, except Vincent wins the bet. He uses the money to pursue his dream of space travel.
    • Bad Catherine: Vincent proposes to Catherine, but she turns him down.
    • Good Catherine: Vincent and Catherine have a fairly stable relationship.
    • True Catherine: Vincent becomes a full demon, and takes over the netherworld with Catherine and dozens of other succubi fawning over him.
  • The horror game Gyossait has two possible endings, depending on whether or not you used the gun to kill anything during the game.
    • If you killed anything using the gun, you will have to fight Gyossait, your former lover, as the final boss of the game. Defeating her will yield you the bad ending, in which both you and her must remain apart forever.
    • If you did not kill anything with the gun, you unlock the Unholy stage, in which Gyossait doesn't seek to hurt you, but you must free her by reflecting your enemies' arrows at her using your shield. Doing this will yield the "Altruist" ending, which finally sees the two of you reunited.
  • Ib has five endings:
    • Worst Ending: Ib fails to return to her world. There are actually three variations of this ending depending on whether Ib was lured away from the Portal Picture by a fake version of Garry or her mother or she simply didn't take the way out when she had the chance.
    • Bittersweet Ending: Garry gives up his rose to Mary to save Ib and Ib burns Mary's portrait in retailation. She manages to return to her world and reunite with her family, but has a nagging feeling that she's forgotten something, and a new picture in the gallery confirms that she's doomed Garry to be a literal "Forgotten Portrait".
    • Mary's Ending: Garry still dies/sleeps forever, but Ib doesn't anger Mary by breaking into her room. She returns to her world and finds out that Mary has managed to escape to her world too and her parents believe her to be a second daughter of theirs. Is a "Together Forever" ending with a Cute and Psycho painting-come-to-life who killed a person to be able to escape to the real world cute or disturbing? You decide!
    • Garry's Normal Ending: Ib doesn't anger Mary enough for her to steal her rose, which allows Garry to live and follow Ib back to the real world. However, he has also lost all memories of their time together in the painting world and they part ways without truly remembering each other.
    • Garry's Best Ending: Ib also has a high enough relationship with Garry to give him her handkerchief. When she finds him in the real world, he initially doesn't remember her but the discovery of her handkerchief in his pocket triggers his memory and he promises to meet her again in the future.


Non-Video Game Examples

Anime & Manga

Strategy Hint: Think about where you made the wrong choice.
Was it alright to hold a strategy meeting at Eva's resort during the night of day two?
Was it alright for you to enter the Mahora Martial Arts Tournament so carelessly?
Was saving Chao and accepting her time machine the right thing to do in the first place?
Return to the previous save point and try again.
You should be able to discover the clues to advancing!
Asuna: Hey hey! Don't end the story on your own! At least pick "continue"!

    • Later played straight, with a movie as an official alternate series ending to the manga's.
  • Paradox Blue employs the trappings of video games to tell its story including multiple endings, usually framed like a Nonstandard Game Over. The first chapter of a story sets up a "paradox," a puzzle posed to the main characters by an angel, which they must solve for a boon or else they're likely to be killed. At the end of the chapter, the story then tells the reader to skip to various pages depending on whether they choose to solve the paradox themselves, let the characters do it, or give up. Giving up always leads to an apocalyptic bad ending where one of the characters is the only person left alive on Earth, while solving the paradox or letting the characters solve it (in the next chapter) allows the story to carry on toward the true ending.


Comic Books

  • Right before the end of the Two-Face themed issue of Joker's Asylum, Joker breaks the fourth wall, demands the reader get a coin and flip it to determine a character's fate: Heads: The character happily reunites with his wife. Tails: He ends up killing himself. Panels are presented for both endings, though, as the Joker explains, only the coin flip determines what "really" happened.


Fanfic

  • The Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy fanfic What The Ed? by Dyl Man has 3 endings. The Sad Ending, the Happy Ending, and Silly Ending. The Sad Ending has Tuluta Bottoms a.k.a. The Red Guy calling the dog pound and having Ed and Nazz end up working in a glue factory. The Happy Ending has Eddy realizing that he loves Nazz, not Tuluta, and sics SuperCow on Tuluta. The Silly Ending has Tuluta butt-walk on Nazz, Nazz retaliating, Ed butt-walking on both girls, and Edd and Eddy butt-walking on Ed.
  • In Relationships Series, there is an Alternate Universe story called "Pain", which details what happens if Yuuno had been sent into combat. He gets injured and overtaxes his linker core, sending him into critical condition. In Ending A, he dies, leaving Nanoha and Fate devastated, and the fic ends with his funeral. In Ending B, he lives, but the main characters still have to protect him from some unethical scientists who want to get their hands on his damaged linker core. The authors indicated that this was already a hypothetical situation, so they should explore both outcomes.
  • The My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic Shipping fic "In the Rain" has two: basically, "They Do" and "They Don't". No, we're not saying which is which.
  • The Axis Powers Hetalia Doujinshi "From the New World, With Love" has a cautiously optimistic ending that would best be described as Bittersweet Ending, but there are two sequels for it, one giving the characters a Happy Ending and the other giving them a Downer Ending instead. The good ending has one character coming back wrong and ultimately dying, and the other character destroying himself to prevent the Enemy Within him from surfacing, and both of them being reincarnated as normal humans. If that's considered the good ending, you don't want to know what the bad ending is like.


Film

  • The movie Clue had three different endings; during its theatrical run, different endings would be shown in different theaters. On the home videotape release, all three endings were shown, with title cards between explaining that any of them could have happened, but only the third actually did happen. In the DVD version, the viewer may choose to see one particular ending, see all three (as in the VHS release), or even have the DVD player choose an ending at random.
  • Spoofed by the ending(s) of Wayne's World, which are, in order, the Sad Ending, the Scooby Doo Ending, and the Super Mega Happy Ending.
    • Wayne's World 2 had the sad ending, the Thelma and Louise ending, and the happy ending.
  • Chase had two endings: in the first the protagonist chooses Suicide by Cop, but it turns out just his imagination. In the proper ending, he escapes with the help of his hostage.
  • The DVD of Peter Pan features an alternative ending where Peter comes back, Wendy is grown up, but she has a daughter Jane, who flies off with Peter.
  • Run Lola Run is either this or a Groundhog Day Loop. It's not clear.
  • Paranormal Activity has three, each one a Downer Ending. It's a horror flick, what did you expect?
    • The theatrical ending has possessed!Katie tossing Micah's dead body into the bedroom before leaping at the camera.
    • The second ending has Katie (no longer possessed) walk into the bedroom with a knife used to kill Micah. She sits on the bed, knees drawn up to her, for what is presumably hours. The next morning the police arrive and Katie walks downstairs. She is shot for being considered a threat, as she still has the knife and was not listening to the police's orders.
    • The third (and most Nightmare Fuel-eriffic) has possessed!Katie calmly enter the bedroom with the knife. She locks the door and looks at the camera, a smile on her face. She then slits her throat and falls down dead.
  • All versions of Little Shop of Horrors each have a different ending:
Audrey II: Oh... shit!
—But at the very very end it is shown that one of Audrey II's spores has survived.
  • Willaim Castle's Mr. Sardonicus allegedly had two endings, shown depending upon whether the audience gave a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down." But Castle only ever filmed the "thumbs down" version.
  • The Korean movie Resurrection Of The Little Matchstick Girl features two endings. One "bad" where the game ends and the main character returns to his normal life and one "good" where he manages to save the eponymous matchstick girl.
  • The DVD version of Final Destination 3, "The Thrill Ride Edition", has four different endings (including the theatrical ending), thanks to the "Choose Their Fate" feature.


Literature

  • This trope was pretty much the entire point of the Choose Your Own Adventure book series. There were other books of this ilk published at the time, but this was by far the best known and longest-running.
    • Most of the "endings" to the books resulted in your death, but there were typically a few endings where you won.
      • It depended on the story. Some were just for fun, and the whole point was simply to have a wild adventure and see where it led; some had multiple outcomes would could be construed as a success; some had a mixture of clearly good and clearly bad endings...and a few went the Failure Is the Only Option route. One memorable tale in the latter category was where you searched for a legendary seagoing dinosaur. There's exactly ONE path where you find the beast (which requires you lose your boat and spend several days alone and adrift), and even then, all that happens is that you report your experience and get to go on a new expedition with a better-equipped vessel. (Okay, I suppose missing several weeks of school to continue an adventure would be considered a triumph for some kids, but still nothing compared to making a monumental scientific breakthrough right then and there.) There's another ending where you earn $10,000; sounds nice, but a cold consolation prize compared to what you came here for.
    • Books that had you gather Plot Coupons usually had a Nonstandard Game Over amounting to "Since you failed to gather the relevant things, you cannot defeat the Big Bad/open the last door/return with honor".
  • The Jeffrey Archer short story One Man's Meat begins with a man meeting the woman of his dreams, and then has four separate endings. There's a reasonably Happy Ending where they hit it off and agree to meet up again, but before that there are three more unfortunate endings: either the guy finds out she's a lesbian, or he finds out that she's married (but not before she has a one night stand with him), or he finds out she's married right away and his evening just gets worse from there.
  • Three Worlds Collide has a Normal End: the humans destroy the place where the story happened, destroying their ship in the process and a True End: the Superhappies re-engineer the other two species to be happy and not eat as many babies. Incidentally, the author is very much a Nasu fan.


Live Action TV

  • Kamen Rider Ryuki has the ending to the TV series, the film EPISODE FINAL and 13 Riders, a televised special which was an alternate retelling of the whole series which had viewers vote on the ending. Subverted, since all the endings save for the TV series presumably ends with a timeloop back to square one.
  • One episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus ended with the customer choosing between several endings.
  • The Red Dwarf episode "Only the Good" had an unfinished alternate ending where Rimmer successfully returns with the formula memorized (after several tries, too, and the group's still there) and they save the Dwarf. The evac ships are left to fend for themselves. And Rimmer still ends up shot with a can by the vending machine. All in all it matches up to "Back to Earth" better than the ending that was used. (It explains why they're alone on the ship again and why Rimmer is a hologram).


Music

  • "Empty Cans", the final song off The Streets' Concept Album "A Grand Don't Come For Free", has this. In the first ending, our protagonist blames everyone else for his problems, tells his friend Scott to fuck off, ends up fighting the TV repairman who comes to fix his set, and decides humanity is generally against his existence. A tape rewinds, and we are brought to the second ending. Mike decides to let Scott come over anyway, who finds the aforementioned "grand" when repairing Mike's TV. Mike realizes everyone's got their own problems and responsibilities to take care of, and looks at life with a new perspective. The beat and chorus even change accordingly.
  • Almost Here, a duet between Delta Goodrem and Brian McFadden, featured a video showing Brian going to meet Delta at an airport. The two of them have difficulty finding each other, until Delta leaves in a taxi. In the 'sad' ending, shown on music TV shows, she is driven away alone. The CD single had the video on it as CD-ROM content, and this version has the 'happy' ending where he catches up with the taxi and they're reunited.
  • Ocean Avenue by Yellowcard. Three possible endings to the video's plot are shown.
  • Vocaloid artist CosMo featured this in one his series. "Demise of Hatsune Miku" was the worst end, "Disappearance of Hatsune Miku" the bad end, "∞" the true end and "Intense Singing of Hatsune Miku" was the "Happy End."


Tabletop Games

  • The Ravenloft boxed set adventure "Bleak House" provided for four different possible endings, as determined by players' choices throughout the last portion of the campaign arc. While many RPG adventures provide two or more concluding text-blocks to read, depending on whether the heroes win or lose, "Bleak House" went much farther, arranging for a prolonged buildup to whichever climax was selected to occur.
  • The original Dragonlance adventures had six different possible win conditions; the Dungeon Master chooses one in secret before running the final module. One of them was used as the canon ending in the Novelization (the Dragonlance Chronicles trilogy), but woe could come to Metagamers who play the adventures after reading the books, as in one of the other endings, performing the action that seals the gate in the novels actually makes the game Unwinnable.


Theatre

  • Ayn Rand's play Night of January 16th featured an unusual form of Audience Participation: a jury is selected from the audience, and at the end of the play, they determine whether the defendant is guilty or not.
  • The musical Drood based on the uncompleted Charles Dickens story The Mystery of Edwin Drood has an audience vote decide who the murderer is -- at which point the cast performs an appropriate closing number.
  • Donald Marguiles' play The Loman Family Picnic features 4 endings performed in quick succession, each dramatic in a different way, until the final "real" ending.


Web Original

  • The 100th episode of Red vs. Blue. The link to the video is actually three different links to video whose only difference were the endings. The first was probably the "bad ending" with everyone killing each other, the second would be a "weird ending" with the entire canyon destroyed and the series is shown to be a Halo multiplayer match, and the relatively good ending with the two teams returning to their endless stalemate.
    • The DVD Commentary and future series confirms the good ending was official (which you would already figure if you had any sense) and also has four more endings.
  • The infamous interactive Quicktime movie Play With Me features multiple endings. Subversion: They're all the bad ending.
  • Writing.com features Interactive Stories where stories can have multiple endings, depending on the reader's choices.
  • This Bytejacker Episode has the host run all over town looking for a UV filter for the cameraman. After searching for maps in trees and fighting strangers via rock paper scissors he ends up getting a bad ending for taking too long.
  • In Today I Die, the protagonist can free herself from a metaphorical depression on her own, or with the help of a young man. Although they're both happy endings, people tend to find one more appealing than the other.
  • I Wish I Were The Moon, made by the same person as Today I Die, has nine endings, which are mostly bittersweet.
  • Bowser's Kingdom episode 666 has two endings. One has Geno breaking free from Zombie Steve's grasp and taking out the rest of the zombies. The other has Hal and Jeff turn into zombies and talking about the positive side about being zombies while feasting on Luigi's corpse. Jeff complains about how bad they smell.


Western Animation

  • SpongeBob SquarePants: The episode "Shanghaied" allowed the viewing audience to pick the ending. In the episode, SpongeBob, Patrick, and Squidward get captured and enslaved by the Flying Dutchman. Eventually, the Dutchman promises them Three Wishes. After wasting the first two, they begin fighting over who gets to make the third one. The viewers were then asked to call in and vote on who they wanted to get the third wish. The winner was SpongeBob. Before the winning ending was played, the audience was shown what the two alternate endings would have been. Subsequent airings played like a normal episode, with only the winning ending shown.
  • Total Drama Island: Once everything came down to the final two contestants, the viewers in each country were allowed to vote for which one they wanted to win.
  • El Tigre did this for its series finale. After spending the whole series unable to decide if he wanted to be a superhero like his dad or a supervillain like his grandpa, Manny was forced to make a final choice. Viewers were asked to vote online to decide if Manny would pick good or evil. The winner was good, with Manny defeating Big Bad Sartana of the Dead and becoming hero of the city. The "evil" ending, which was shown on Nickelodeon's website, has Manny join Sartana instead, help her conquer the city, and then betray her and rule the city himself.
  • South Park: "The List". It ends with Stan and Wendy getting back together after exposing a list of who the cutest boy in school was. But there's a bonus after that with Cartman sitting at the ugly kids' table.

Cartman: This is bullcrap!


Real Life

  • There are five ways for the universe to end: The Big Crunch, where gravity ultimately stops the universe's expansion, causing it to collapse back on itself and implode; the Big Bounce, where a new universe is created from a Big Crunch; the Big Rip, where dark energy literally tears the entire universe apart, the Big Chill, where dark energy accelerates the expansion of the universe until everything fades away, and finally the Big Halt, where gravity slows down the universe's expansion, but cannot stop it.
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