6 Classic Franchises That Can Have Dark Endings in Gaming

Video game adaptations of major franchises can sometimes use the medium to paint very dark futures for some beloved characters. For the most part, gaming doesn’t break the mold with characters and concepts established in other media. However, some game developers see an opportunity when it comes to gaming’s habit of including multiple possible endings in a title, giving them a chance to showcase the worst-case scenario for some beloved characters and worlds.

Some of these dark endings are effectively the “Bad Ending” for superheroes and cinematic icons, revealing how poorly things could go if the player doesn’t utilize their abilities to the best of their ability. In others, the dark ending is expanded into an entire separate campaign, forcing players into the role of the villain to ransack and slaughter the heroes they’ve come to love. Here are six times that fan-favorite franchises could come to a brutal ending in the world of gaming.

Batman: Dark Tomorrow

Released on the GameCube and Xbox in 2003, Batman: Dark Tomorrow is an early precursor to the Batman: Arkham series. The game’s final confrontation pits the Dark Knight against his old enemy Ra’s Al Ghul. However, players had to find and deactivate Ra’s bombs before starting the final confrontation. Doing that was the only way to earn the game’s Golden Ending, where they actually save the world. In the other possible endings, even defeating Ra’s ends with the villain activating his explosives around the world and dooming one-third of the planet’s population. It’s a grim potential future for the DC Universe, even in the endings where Batman defeats Ra’s only to watch as the bombs still go off.

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance

Released across several consoles, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance sent teams of Marvel heroes into massive battles against hordes of villains. Each level contained a secret objective that, if accomplished, would positively impact the world during the end-game epilogue. However, failure to complete those side-quests leaves the future of this Marvel Universe in much more dire straits. Everything from the assassination of Charles Xavier, the extinction of the mutant race, the rise of Thanos, and the obliteration of the Western United States via asteroid is all on the table if players fail to fully explore the top-down maps and work to rescue every potential ally.

The Lord of the Rings: Conquest

The hack-and-slash tactical game The Lord of the Rings: Conquest was largely focused on recreating the Star Wars: Battlefront style of gameplay in the world of Middle-earth, with plenty of iconic battle recreations. One of the game’s darker selling points, though, was an “Evil” campaign, which imagined a world where Frodo’s corruption at Mount Doom was just enough of a window for Sauron to reclaim the One Ring. The player is then tasked with playing as Sauron’s armies as they lay siege to the rest of the world, killing off iconic heroes and steadily slaughtering their way through the remnants of the heroic forces. While there’s a certain amount of fun to be had in playing as the Balrog or Saruman, it’s still a harrowing ending for the fantastical world.

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis

Released in 1992, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis is a classic point-and-click adventure game that places players into the role of Indy on a globe-trotting adventure. The title had a number of potential endings, often regarding the fate of Indy’s love interest, Sophia, or if the villainous Ubermann was tricked in the finale into testing out his unstable experiments on himself. However, two possible endings stand out as tragic finales for the franchise as a whole. In some circumstances, Indy can be defeated by the Nazis, leaving the game’s narration to hint that Hitler’s war machine will now ravage the entire world. In another scenario, the final level’s transformation is used on Indiana Jones instead of Sophia or Ubermann. The result is a transformation that briefly gives Indiana god-like abilities, only for his body to crumble to ashes under the immense weight of his newfound power. This at least comes with the side-effect of dooming the Nazis present, but also means Indy suffers a pretty inglorious ending.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

Set between the events of the Star Wars prequel and the original trilogy, the Star Wars: The Force Unleashed games cast players as Starkiller, the secret apprentice of Darth Vader. While the good ending for the game sees Starkiller rebel against the Dark Side and give his life to save his friends, the darker path has him embrace the way of the Sith and kill Vader. This sets up a chain of events that have played out in DLC missions where the player, in the role of the fully corrupted Starkiller, intervenes in the events of the original trilogy and single-handedly kills Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi, corrupts Luke Skywalker, and — in the sequel’s connected DLC — ends the Rebel Alliance once and for all by killing Han, Chewie, and a Jedi-trained Leia.

South Park: The Stick of Truth

South Park: The Stick of Truth has a lot of fun with bringing the sardonic stylings of the animated series to the RPG format, with a plotline that parodies plenty of fantasy tropes in gaming. One of the game’s most potentially deadly turns happens when players discover the existence of a snuke inside Mr. Slave. For the game to continue, players must shrink down inside Mr. Slave and disarm the bomb. However, refusing the mission or activating the explosive by mistake ends with the titular town destroyed in a blast of radioactive fire, killing everyone and forcing the game to cut straight to the “credits.” It’s a grimly hilarious possible finale for the whole of the mountain town of South Park.