How It Should Have Ended
"Sometimes movies don't finish the way we'd like"
How It Should Have Ended is an Internet parody series depicting alternate endings for popular movies. It was started by Daniel Baxter and Tommy Watson, featuring Tina Alexander. The episodes are hand drawings given animation, and augmented with special effects and music. Each features an original "ending" that ranges from crazy awesome crossovers, to ridiculous and funny developments, to deconstructing it by simply shooting the villain or taking a third, sensible action. It also hosts featurettes such as "Surviving an Alien Invasion" and comics.
The site can be found here, and their YouTube channel is here.
Now has a Shout-Out page.
Spoofed films:
- 2012
- 300
- Aliens (Twice!)
- The Avengers
- Avatar
- Beowulf
- Borat
- Braveheart
- Captain America: The First Avenger
- The Dark Knight
- District 9
- Ghostbusters
- Harry Potter
- The Hunger Games
- Inception
- Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
- Iron Man
- It's a Wonderful Life
- Jaws
- Jurassic Park
- The Lord of the Rings
- The Matrix
- Ocean's Eleven
- Pirates of the Caribbean
- Predator
- Pulp Fiction
- Saving Private Ryan
- Saw
- Scream
- Se7en
- Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
- The Social Network
- Spider-Man 3
- Star Trek
- Star Wars (So far, episodes 4,5 and 6)
- Superman
- The Terminator (Crossover with Back to The Future)
- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
- Thor
- Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
- Tron
- Twilight (So far, the first two films... though New Moon appears to be a Missing Episode now.)
- Top Gun
- Toy Story 3
- Underworld
- Weird Science
- Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory
- The Wizard of Oz
- X Men First Class
Spoofed video games:
- Assassin's Creed
- Halo: Reach
- Modern Warfare 2
- Mortal Kombat
- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
- Super Mario Bros.
- World of Warcraft
- God of War
- Resident Evil
Spoofed television shows:
- Actor Allusion: See How It Should Have Ended/Shout Out.
- Actually Pretty Funny: After Captain America gets annoyed at Superman and Batman annoying him, this happens:
Cap: But wait! Shh! Do you guys hear that?
(Beat)
Batman: Hear what?
Cap: Do I hear the Justice League calling?
(Beat)
Superman: I don't hear anything.
Batman: Yeah, me neither.
Cap: Exactly!
Superman: (laughs)
Batman: Whammo!
Superman: Captain America burn!
- Affectionate Parody: Sometimes. They also have a knack of making fun of films but making fans of the film laugh as well as haters.
- Alas, Poor Villain: In-universe, the "I'm just a lonely Zombie" song from Resident Evil.
- All Just a Dream: If only! Poor Indy.
- All-Star Cast: Parodied in the Ocean's 40 trailer.
- Alternate Character Interpretation:
- One of Glinda the Good Witch becomes revealed in-universe after one of the Munchkins shoots the Wicked Witch of the West:
Well, this ruins my plan to send you [Dorothy] on a journey, and teach you a lesson, and eventually have you kill the Wicked Witch yourself!
- One of Bowser becomes revealed in one of the other videos: He witnessed Mario slaughter his people, and so decided to call Princess Peach for negotiations. Unfortunately, Mario always interrupts, and nearly kills Bowser in the process.
- Bella from Twilight when turned is not a Vegetarian Vampire like the Cullens and is pretty damn happy about it.
Bella: Lets go eat some PEOPLE! Woo!
- Art Evolution: The animation became livelier as the show progressed.
- Award Snub: In-Universe. For the 2012 Best Picture Summary where Harry, Snape, and Voldemort wonder why their latest effort didn't get a Best Picture nomination.
- Black Bead Eyes
- Blatant Lies: The Ocean's Eleven parody Ocean's 40 movie trailer said that it was Based on a True Story.
- Breakout Characters: The episodes with Superman and Batman at the cafe are considered by many to be the best shorts. As a result, they grace the icons for the HISHE YouTube and Facebook pages, and also have their own show: Super Cafe.
- The Cameo
- Cannot Keep a Secret: Batman apparently reveals (or tries ro reveal) his Secret Identity to every girl he finds attractive.
Iron Man: You mean to tell me you've never revealed your secret identity before?
Batman: Uh, no.
Superman: Ha! Try every girl you've ever dated!
Batman: What?
Superman: "Oh, I'm Bruce Wayne, and I like you! Let me tell you my big secret!"
Batman: Oh, you're one to talk, Mr. Mind Eraser.
- Canon Discontinuity: Lampshaded in-universe, after Batman has declared that he has the power to "make an incredibly awesome movie!":
Superman: So, we're just going to pretend like those guys never happened? [Points to a table where the Penguin from Batman Returns, Two-Face and the Riddler from Batman Forever and Mister Freeze from Batman and Robin are sitting] Is that what we're doing?
Batman: Yep.
- Catch Phrase: "I'm Batman".
- "You wanna know my secret identity?"
- Charlie and the Chocolate Parody: Mostly the "scary tunnel" sequence.
- Classical Mythology: Lampshaded
Kratos: Ares? I already killed you.
Mars: Nope, I'm Mars, the Roman God of War... Tooootally different.
Kratos: NO!
Mars: Aww man.
- Christmas Episode: "The Holiday Movie Special"
- Comically Missing the Point - The Dark Knight vid has an early gag where the Chechen misses the point of Joker's "magic trick."
"That wasn't a magic trick! I saw the pencil just went up into his eye, this is lame..."
- Cool Old Guy: Jimmy Stewart proclaims he's one in "A Look Back at It's a Wonderful Life.
- Crossover: How Terminator Should End is actually a mock trailer crossover between Terminator and Back to The Future!
- And it's got to be said, it looks fantastic.
- Bowser manages to finally get rid of Mario by tricking him into the Aperture Science facility.
GLaDOS: Would you like some delicious cake?
- Cut Lex Luthor a Check: In the Hunger Games parody, one of the random techs wonders this...
"Hey, you guys ever think we should use all this money and technology to actually solve the world's problems? End world hunger? Save the rainforest? No, just me? We'd rather kids fight to the death. Okay... Just thought I'd ask."
- Cyborg: William Wallace
- Dance Party Ending: In BioShock (series).
- Death Is Cheap: Nagini killed Snape before Harry's eyes, but Snape's knowledge of potions and healing injuries helped him survive.
- Defictionalization: Mario ends up in Aperture Science facility. Cue Mari0 next year.
- Don't Explain the Joke: After Frodo destroys the ring,
"Can you imagine what it would've been like if we had walked the entire way"
(Everybody starts laughing)
"It's funny because it's extremely far."
- Downer Ending:
- Since a Munchkin killed the Wicked Witch before Dorothy took her journey through Oz, she went home early, and never took the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion to have their desires granted by the Wizard.
- Ripley's decision to send the alien through the airlock led to the deaths of her, Newt, and Hicks.
- One of the segments in Ghostbusters ends with the Ghostbusters dying after trying to cross the streams.
- Kirk and the Enterprise crew decide to just let themselves get sucked by the black hole. They end up in the Star Wars universe, and get immediately vaporized by Darth Vader.
- The Pulp Fiction video has Mia get a shot of adrenaline to the face, and Vincent and Jules killed by the man who failed to shoot them in the original movie.
- "Everybody Laughs" Ending: The Lord of the Rings
- Every Episode Ending: Each superhero-related episode ends with the heroes talking with Superman and Batman in the coffee shop except for Spider-Man 3, where it appears briefly in the middle.
- Fridge Logic: They often show more common sense or realistic ways for the movies to have ended invoking this trope.
- Funny Aneurysm Moment: In-universe. As Six notices in the Halo: Reach short, one way to make an introduction really awkward is if every comment you make only keeps highlighting each character's eventual death.
- G-Rated Drug: Willy Wonka decided to install the infamous scary tunnel while on a sugar high.
- Genre Savvy: Spiderman in his final battle with Venom knows full well that he won't die.
- Six hears Carter's inspirational opening, heavily tempting their fate, and knows immediately how each of the members will die. Then knows that he's a dead man too if he lingers with these guys and runs for the hills.
- Gilligan Cut: From Darth Vader anticipating the joy his long-lost son will feel when they meet, to Luke Skywalker's Big No.
- Gosh Dang It to Heck: Pulp Fiction includes one of the many lines containing the f-word, and turns it into gibberish.
- Groin Attack: The easy way to defeat chainsaw guys from Texas.
- The Guards Must Be Crazy: Pretty much what the Assassin's Creed parody boils down to.
- Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Kratos gets played up as this. But not even he can kill Morgan Freeman.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Captain America is determined to invoke this, even though there are other and better options available to him.
- Hilarious Outtakes: "A Look Back at It's a Wonderful Life"
- Hypocritical Humor: Megatron jokingly asks if the aliens in Battleship look like the pegs from the game, and proceeds to rant about how some movies completely alter iconic designs.
- I Choose to Stay: Thor decides to stay on Midgard with Jane Foster instead of return to Asgard and fight Loki.
- I Love the Smell of X In the Morning: Quaritch in Avatar saying he loves the smell of CGI in the morning.
- I'm a Man, I Can't Help It: HISHE's interpretation of Arthur, in Inception.
- In Name Only: Lampshaded at the end of Dead Man's Chest, when Ragetti exclaims, "This ain't anything like the ride at Disney World!"
- Kill'Em All: Ghostbusters and Jurassic Park.
- The Jimmy Hart Version: Any time you hear an iconic theme in this series it won't sound exactly like the original, because of copyright rules.
- Leap And Slash: In Harry Potter, Neville decapitates Nagini while flying sideways through the air and yelling, "I'm awesoooooome!"
- Lens Flare: Parodied in Star Trek.
Kirk: Computer, I want you to shut down all the lens flare generators.
Spock: Fascinating, I was unaware that we had that.
Kirk: It's nice, right? I mean, who designs a starship where lights shine right in your eye from virtually every angle!
- Loads and Loads of Characters And Zoidberg: "Ocean's 40".
Tom Hanks, Bill Murray, Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Connery... Neil Diamond, Optimus Prime, George Lucas, Chuck Norris... and Julia Roberts.
- Morgan Freeman: Pops in as God, at the end of a list of Gods Kratos plans to kill[1], but is spared just because he's MORGAN FREEMAN
- Mayfly-December Romance: Points out that without transforming Bella from Twilight into vampire, in 60 years or so Bella would be an old lady whilst Edward was still forever young.
- Narm: Invoked intentionally in Beowulf.
- Also pokes fun at Tobey Maguire's narmy crying in Spider-Man 3.
- Superman reckons that the new stage-voice in The Dark Knight is like Batman gargling marbles.
- Not Wearing Pants: In Inception.
- Odd Friendship: Their take on Skyrim has The Dragonborn form one with the Big Bad, Alduin, after discovering that the Thu'um renders him completely unable to talk to regular people, without completely destroying them.
- Only in It For the Money: Apparently the reason George Lucas felt less willing than Steven Spielberg to apologize for Indiana Jones 4.
- Overly Long Gag: The Inception clip from the Oscars video.
- Overly Polite Pals: in Top Gun.
- Pretty Little Headshots: When Snape shoots Voldemort in Harry Potter.
- Properly Paranoid: It was smart for Ripley to check whether the Xenomorph Queen had stowed away on their ship. It probably wasn't such a good idea to shoot the Xenomorph Queen though...she has acid blood.
- Reality Ensues: In Two Thousand Twelve.
- In Top Gun, Maverick punching Iceman for causing the death of his best friend, earlier in the movie.
- Reality Is Unrealistic: In Captain America, Armin Zola questions the Red Skull why they should label their bombs in English when they are German. The words written on the bombs were names of US cities: New York, Chicago, etc. These names are written the same way in both English and German.
- Red Shirt: Parodied in Star Trek, when Kirk orders all red shirts on board the Enterprise to be jettisoned to lighten the weight of the ship. Scotty takes time to put on a different shirt before fulfilling the order.
- And again in Halo: Reach, where after his big Tempting Fate speech, Carter hands Six a red shirt with the ONI logo on it.
- Rhymes on a Dime: The Munchkins.
- Roses Are Red, Violets Are Blue: Their version of Jimmy Stewart writes one.
- Rule of Cool: Lampshaded in the Tron rap, where they point out that Flynn could have just uninstalled the MCP... "But thats no fun to animate!"
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Six in Halo: Reach.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: In Harry Potter, Snape uses Hermione's Time-Turner (which Harry convinced her to keep) to kill Tom Riddle when Dumbledore's talking to him in the orphanage.
- Sheathe Your Sword: How the characters survive the Predator. Until The Stinger.
Dutch: You idiots! There are weapons on the choppaaa!
- Shout-Out: This page
- Shut UP, Hannibal: In "X-Men First Class", Xavier gets fed up with Magneto's attempts to perform his Motive Rant, freezes everyone and mind-controls Azazel to teleport him to a hospital.
Magneto: Charles? Wh-what are you doing?
Xavier: I've been shot you selfish a-hole!
- Smug Super: Superman is very fond of lording all his superpowers -- and the awesome things they enable him to do -- over Batman.
- Iron Man in spades, his reply to Batman telling him he shouldn't have revealed his identity.
"Why not? Cause I did... and I'm awesome! So... in your face!"
- Batman gets a chance to have his own back in The Dark Knight:
Superman: But dude, you know what I would've done?
Batman: Oh, I don't know, probably just-
Superman and Batman simultaneously: Fly really fast, saving everyone from the bullets and explosions!
Superman: Exactly!
Batman: Yeah, well, I can't do those things. Because I'm not a super-bulletproof alien from another planet that can defy gravity. But you know what I can do?
Superman: What's that?
Batman: Make an incredibly awesome movie! ...You know why?
Superman: [Resigned] Because you're Bat-
Batman: Because I'm Batman!
- Batman calls Superman out on his twitter feed consisting of him repeatedly posting;
Batman: "Just saved the day. Just saved the day. Just got back from saving the day. Here I go to save the day. Just saved the day twice. I'm saving the day. Just saved the day tagged with Wonder Woman. Just saved the day" *phone beeps* And you just posted something new, what does it say, ah, "Just saved the day".
Superman: Yeah I just rescued these people while you were reading that.
- Superman counters that Batman isn't much better, as he keeps posting "I'm Batman!" on twitter.
- Stolen MacGuffin Reveal: In the Sherlock Holmes 2 parody, Holmes and Moriarty try to one up each other in this regard with an air tank and life vest, respectively.
- Stupid Sacrifice: Captain America's Heroic Sacrifice is parodied to be this in HISHE. Why couldn't Cap turn the plane around, circle for a while, find warmer water to crash land into, fly one of the bomb-planes as an escape, or try to find some other way to avoid crashing into freezing arctic water? The film proper never explains, and HISHE has a field day with it.
- Tempting Fate: Kat refuses to put on her helmet in the Halo: Reach short, and Jorge talks abut "going down with the ship" while playing with a miniature Covenant Corvette toy. Carter goes on about how he'll "fly right into the heart of the enemy" and Emile is obsessed with sharp objects. Gee, I wonder what happens?
- The Dog Was the Mastermind: The Stinger of Spider-Man 3.
- Those Two Guys: Superman and Batman often meet in a diner and comment on such occurrences as Spider-Man's Character Derailment and HISHE's revival.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Superman and Batman.
- Vocal Evolution: Darth Vader sounds very different in Star Trek compared to the videos about the Star Wars sequels.
- Warm Bloodbags Are Everywhere: In Twilight.
- What the Hell, Hero?: To Jake in Avatar.
- And Harry Osborn to his butler after realizing the latter knew the truth about his father but never told him.
"I took a grenade to the face, dude!"
- Also, Bishop and Newt to Ripley after she opens the airlock.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Jun doesn't even appear in the Halo: Reach short. But the Chief does.
- Why Don't Ya Just Shoot Him/Her: Frequently subverted.
- A Munchkin decides to use his gun against the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz.
- Iron Man uses a tank missile against Obadiah Stane.
- In Revenge Of The Fallen, they just use the Rail Gun to kill the Fallen.
- In The Dark Knight, this becomes "Why Don't You Just Run Him Over":
Superman: Woah, hold on a second -- you hit him?
Batman: Yep.
Superman: You hit the Joker.
Batman: Uh-huh.
Superman: You ran over a human being.
Batman: Sure did.
Superman: But... what about your rule?!
Batman: [Smugly] Didn't kill 'im.
[Cut to the Joker, lying in a hospital bed covered in casts, moaning in pain]
The Joker: You wanna know how I got these scars?
Nurse: From Batman?
The Joker: From Batman.
- In Harry Potter, Snape shoots Voldemort, then uses the Time Turner and Invisibility Cloak to kill young Tom Riddle as well.
- Within Parameters: Parodied in Spider-man 3:
Scientist 1: There's a change in the silicon mass.
Scientist 2: Yeah, it's probably just a bird.
Scientist 3: Here's a bright idea: why don't you make sure it's just a bird before you mutate the crap out of something just because you were too lazy to safely run this nighttime sand mutation experiment?
Scientist 2: Fine. (stops experiment) ...That is a big bird down there. Kinda looks like a guy. Oh, wait, it is a guy down there!
- Worth It: In Game of Thrones Sansa's head-on-a-spike invokes this after pushing Joffrey of the rampart to his death.
- Writers Cannot Do Math: When Snape goes back in time with the Time-Turner to kill Voldemort, he turns it over about 262,000 times, which, at an hour per turn, should put him back about thirty years - nowhere near enough to get Tom at the orphanage.
- Ignoring the amount of time Snape uses to turn the Time turner in the first place.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Venom in Spiderman 3.
- ↑ Also on this list were Anubis, Diablo, L. Ron Hubbard, Okami, Raiden, Gozer, Cthulhu, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster