Eight fantastic games whose endings make absolutely no sense

If you’ve played enough video games, then you can often tell where the story is going. Mario will save the princess, Sonic will defeat Dr. Eggman, and the evil mastermind is always Junko Enoshima. That doesn’t mean that video games can’t surprise us. This list is dedicated not to games with clever twists that we didn’t see coming, but games with endings so wild there was no way you could see it coming. These are games that make turns so sharp they’d give Clippy a paper cut. Checking you’re not in a late-night cheese-induced fever dream is all part of the charm of these eight nonsensical game endings.

Silent Hill 2

The Dog Ending is one of the most infamous game endings of all time for just how wildly tonally inconsistent it is with the rest of the game. Not only is it seemingly random and not at all fitting with the general terrifying tone of the game, but it’s also very difficult to achieve. You must first reach the three main endings for Silent Hill 2, and on your fourth playthrough you have to find the dog house near Jack’s Inn to get the Dog Key. You then need to go to the Observation Room in the Lakeview Hotel and open it up to get this ending.

Inside is a shiba who is at the helm of a control panel. When James stumbles on the good boy he collapses to the floor and wisely notes “So it was all your work”. We are then treated to the credits with a dog barking out a cheerful tune. The Dog Ending is one of the reasons why Silent Hill 2 has been cemented in people’s memories as one of the greatest of all time.

Pathologic

Pathologic is a game all about pain. Not just the pain and suffering of the people of the town who are struck by the plague, but the pain and suffering of you as a player. Pathologic is hard. Unspeakably hard. It’s hostile to you at every step. You have multiple stats that you need to keep on top of; inflation keeps the prices going up, and choosing one dialogue option locks you out of all others with no chance to return. Combat is unfair and frankly discouraged, and overall, you feel completely powerless. Just trying to survive to see the end of the game is hard enough, but if you go beyond this, you will be rewarded with so much more.

What Pathologic does best is surprise, and every time you play it, you will see and learn something new. If you save all the people of the town, you are invited into the Polyhedron floating high above, only to find out that the town is merely a game. It is all a part of a children’s sandbox, and they decide the story. This angered players who felt they had suffered enough, but then there was a secret ending even beyond that. Completing absolutely everything allows you to meet the game’s developers, who smash through the fourth wall and tell you not to be upset by the doll house ending because you knew Pathologic was a game all along. You’re playing it. They even point out how annoying not being able to ask different questions is. Pathologic is all about pain and suffering, and the final ending has the last laugh.

Stanley Parable

The Stanley Parable is known for its multiple endings, and each one of them is never what you expect. A list would feel incomplete without a mention of it somewhere, but there is one ending that caught us off guard more than the rest. If you decide to disobey the narrator, eventually, they get a bit fed up with you and decide to give you a different game to play. There is a baby crawling pretty quickly towards a fire, and you must press a button in order to deter it. The narrator tells you that you have to push the button for four hours if you want to truly appreciate the game, but of course, you can just defy them one more time.

If you let the baby burn, the narrator will get fed up with you and invite you to play another game instead. You will find yourself in Minecraft, and after building a few structures, the narrator thinks you might enjoy Portal a bit more. If those games are not your style, you could try the Ultra Deluxe version which will first put you into Firewatch, before giving you a go on Rocket League. It wouldn’t be Stanley Parable if it didn’t mess with your preconceptions.

Tekken 3

Every time you complete Arcade Mode of Tekken 3 with a character, you get rewarded with that character’s specific ending. These are mostly cute little videos that explain more of the lore of each character, but when you finish Tekken 3 with one of the hardest characters, that’s when the ending goes hard. Gon is a licensed character from a manga and anime of the same name. He’s a tiny dinosaur who is unlocked by defeating him in Tekken Ball (volleyball with Tekken characters), making him one of the most difficult to unlock. You then have to finish the game, which is pretty challenging given his small stature, but finishing it is so worth it.

One of the best parts of Gon’s ending is that it makes a beautiful loop. We start out with our hero leaping out of the ocean on a dolphin before being shot up out of a whale’s blow hole. Landing in the jungle, he speeds through with the help of a jaguar before diving off a cliff onto a seagull. Attempting to fly, he lands back into the ocean, only to be picked up by a friendly dolphin before the loop starts over again. It’s so rhythmic you can’t look away.

IQ: Intelligent Qube

The title IQ: Intelligent Qube suggests a game that’s just a little bit silly. However, the name becomes even funnier when you realize that it takes itself pretty seriously. The intelligent part of Intelligent Qube is pretty spot on, as it’s a puzzle game that feels almost impossible to complete. You play as a person – or dog – who has to erase blocks from a seemingly never-ending wall that moves toward you. If you fail to make it through, you will fall to your demise. It may sound simple, but as it progresses and the blocks speed up, it definitely isn’t.

However, if you are intelligent enough to beat the Qube, you are rewarded with the ending. As a bombastic narrator speaks over the top, you find out that the moving block puzzle you have been struggling to beat is in fact a test sent down by some sort of deity. The Intelligent Qube was created to determine if individuals are worthy of life, and completing it allows you to be present for the beginning of the Universe. It is the sheer sincerity with which this ending was created that makes it go so hard.

Kingdom Hearts 0.2 Birth by Sleep - a Fragmentary Passage -

The fact that Kingdom Hearts’ story is unparseable has long been a part of the lore, and part of the reason for this is that the developers feel the need to explain every tiny detail. The original Kingdom Hearts game is about finding Mickey Mouse after he goes missing, and we see just a brief glimpse of him at the end of the game. He’s shown in his classic red shorts and big yellow shoes, but in later games he is fully clothed with a Kingdom Hearts outfit. Absolutely no one was wondering why Michael Mouse chose to later put on a shirt, but Kingdom Hearts still blessed us with an answer.

Fans believe that the perfectly named Kingdom Hearts 0.2 Birth by Sleep -A Fragmentary Passage- was developed specifically with the aim of explaining why Mickey is shirtless in KH1. In a scene near the end, Mickey is standing with Aqua waiting for Riku when Heartless creatures come to attack them. Aqua traps them for an instant before they escape, scooping Mickey up and spitting him out again sans shirt. The Heartless took his shirt, but why? Did they steal it to absorb the power? Why did it disintegrate? These are important questions that only another spin-off game can answer.

AI: The Somnium Files

If you watch the ending to AI: The Somnium Files in a vacuum, it’s just a jolly dance track that feels like the perfect ending to any piece of media. However, when you see it immediately after playing through the game for the last 20 or so hours, it really takes you off guard. For those who haven’t played it – and you absolutely should – it’s a dark murder mystery with twists, gore, and psychological horror that will genuinely give you the creeps. Then the whole crew will burst out in song and act like everything was chill the whole time.

While a strange tonal shift, it’s actually a great ending. The story has a happy-ish ending overall, but it can still be hard to get over the horrors of what you’ve just seen. Ending on this catchy J-Pop number is a really nice reset. This is the normal ending from the original game, but those who are looking for a genuinely mind-bending and difficult-to-achieve ending should check out the Frayer ending from the sequel, AI: The Somnium Files - nirvanA Initiative -. 

Detroit: Become Human

David Cage is not known for his subtlety when it comes to storytelling, but his magnum opus when it comes to heavy-handed metaphors is Detroit: Become Human. Detroit is the story of androids, who are currently used as unpaid labor for the humans, going ‘deviant’, i.e. starting a revolution for their own rights. I hope that description already has alarm bells ringing. Each character has their own ending, but our favorite is the pacifist ending for our robo-MLK, Markus.

If you meet the humans with peace and not violence at every step, Markus will have the opportunity to lead the androids in song at the final showdown with the humans. Bear in mind that everyone in this scene is in the middle of an all-out war, hundreds dead on either side, and Markus and about ten of his mates just begin singing in perfect harmony. There’s just something about this scene: the way the androids sing in perfectly rehearsed harmonies, the knowing nods between everyone, the men in the helicopter that had just been gunning them down shouting “incredible.” It is art. Who knew we could end racism with a few show tunes?