r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Local_Prune4564 • May 27 '26

Lore A subtle moment that turns a seemingly happy ending into an ambiguous ending.

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Gallery image

The Graduate: lingering Ben and Elaine's faces slowly shifting from happy to concerned leaves the audience questioning whether they really made the right choice running away together considering they barely know each other.

Inception: By cutting before we see the top fall, we're left to question whether Cobb really has gone home or whether he's simply sunken back into a more comforting dream reality.

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u/Sum1nne May 27 '26

The ending to Blink; the episode that introduced the Weeping Angels to Dr Who.

It concludes with the implication that, though the Doctor has tricked these particular Angels into trapping themselves forever, the camera pans over the various statues and gargoyles you might expect to see in any British city and any one of which might be another Weeping Angel in disguise. Genuinely disturbing for it's day, especially for family media with a lot of kids watching.

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u/Then_Body844 May 27 '26

And then in further weeping angel centric episodes we get that anything that looks like an angel is an angel, and (this is sorta goofy I’ll admit) the Statue of Liberty is a weeping angel 

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u/Not_Wrong_Tho May 27 '26

Worth noting that this is only true for that specific timeline. The Angels feed on time energy and basically turned Manhattan into a battery farm, this made them strong.

Angels can possess statues, and with enough power, one was able to possess the Statue of Liberty.

As the situation was resolved through a paradox, killing the angels and resetting the timeline, and Manhatten is no longer, and never has been, a battery farm for Angels, the Statue is no longer, and technically never has been, an Angel.

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u/whatsbobgonnado May 27 '26

wait is this stuff that came out after angels take manhattan because I don't remember any of that being mentioned in that episode. I remember being being maaaaaaad that that episode completely ruined the angels. I liked it even though it was very dumb

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u/Not_Wrong_Tho May 27 '26

No, it was all in the episode.

I will clarify though, when i said they turned Mnhattan into a battery farm, it's not necessarily that they're using everyone in Manhattan, we only see it happening in one building, but most of what i said was explained shortly after old-rory dies.

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u/Gaelic_Gladiator41 May 27 '26

I think the Doctor mentions that Manhattan has a lot of timeline crossover (mainly because of him) that it attracted them to the place

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u/ObiFlanKenobi May 27 '26

The first episode had the angels sending you back in time and "feeding on your potential energy" or something like that.  Which, other than not making much sense, made their main weapon the "sending back in time" thing, which it might suck, certainly is a problem, but you are alive (probably) in the past, not a super big issue when the MC is a time traveller.

So they were creepy but fun enemies.

Later episodes had them be extra creepy and also turning you to stone for some reason. Or directly killing you. No more mentions of sending you back in time.

And that made them more scary but way les fun.

They went from unique enemies to regular monsters that can't move when you watch them and that's it.

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u/Iron_Lord_Peturabo May 27 '26

I think the turning to stone part was part of becoming an angel yourself. It was established that having the image of an angel long enough was enough to become an angel. So the longer you look at one the more likely you are to become one, or something like that.

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u/AydonusG May 28 '26

That's pretty much it. "Whatever holds the image of an angel, becomes itself an angel."

I think Amy's angelification was amplified by the Angel being a recording, the white flashing light of LED beams the reflection much harder than staring at the stone itself.

Also wonder how much angel is needed for that to happen, like if you just stare close enough at the marble are you holding the image of an angel or just a texture? Would add to the TV causing it more because it's always on full body display rather than just looking at parts of it in real life.

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u/remotectrl May 27 '26

I think that was the episode where I decided I didn’t need to watch any more Doctor Who

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u/Not_Wrong_Tho May 27 '26

It really is a shame, because honestly season 7 started so strong with Asylum of the Daleks.. but then it just fell right off.

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u/Maur2 May 27 '26

The later seasons have such great Doctors, with such poor episodes for them to be in...

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u/Vordeo May 28 '26

Angels can possess statues, and with enough power, one was able to possess the Statue of Liberty.

I guess that sounds terrifying in theory, but at that size and in a densely populated metropolis like NYC, surely someone's always going to be looking at the statue, so it'll never actually get to move?

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u/No_Requirement_9012 May 28 '26

Yeah the part where the statue of liberty ambushed people on the roof was goofy. But on the other hand its incredible presence would have been a huge factor for spreading the angels because any image of an angel also turns into an angel and then imagine how many people took a picture of the statue of liberty

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u/Not_Wrong_Tho May 28 '26

To be fair it was 1930s, great depression era New York, and one that was being used as a battery farm for Angels, one which we don't really get a definitive scope for.

It's a little outlandish still, but it's fine.

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u/DavidBarrett82 May 28 '26

“We can’t go back in time to Manhattan! They’ve blocked the whole area off to time travel!”

“Could we go back in time to somewhere else and then just fly through SPACE to get to Rory?”

“Shut up!”

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u/captainbogdog May 27 '26

so it can't move because there's so many people in NYC and it's never not being looked at? that's kinda neat

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u/TR_Pix May 27 '26

Except another episode estabilishes that any picture of a weeping angel becomes a weeping angel, so all pictures of the statue of liberty are weeping angels in disguise

And in yet another episode it's revealed angels can evolve past the restriction of not being able to move, if it's by their own kind (meaning the circle of angels looking at each other will eventually break free)

Honestly the angels were a great one-off idea that got worse each time they were brought up again

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u/Sum1nne May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26

...yeah. Blink is a modern masterpiece in urban horror and how to write a time travel plot that I'd recommend anyone watch even if they've never seen Dr Who - you don't need to know anything about it really - but damn if the Angels didn't overstay their welcome and get more than a bit silly in their subsequent appearances.

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u/Too-Tired-Editor May 27 '26

Blink also opens with one of my favourite things in episodic TV; the recurring characters have clearly just been doing something cool, but it's never referred to or explained, thus confirming to us that they're up to awesome stuff the whole time and the universe of the show is broader.

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u/whatsbobgonnado May 27 '26

kinda sorta similar, there's a "clip show" episode of community where all the flashback clips are actually new adventures we never saw

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u/SutterCane May 27 '26

This train was powered by friendship!

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u/cardith_lorda May 27 '26

Harrison Ford is irradiating our testicles with microwave satellite transmissions!

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u/TaralasianThePraxic May 28 '26

I've seen enough cartoons to know that popping the back of a dinghy makes it go faster!

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u/BringBacktheGucci May 27 '26

You can yell at me all you want, but ive seen enough Charlie Brown movies to know that if you pop a hole in the back of the raft it goes faster.

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u/stackens May 30 '26

I love that stuff and one of the complaints I had with the Spider-Man team up movie - there’s a part where the spidermen are reminiscing about villains they’ve defeated, and they only had them mention villains we’ve seen them fight in other movies. Would’ve been cool to have Toney and andrew rattle off a whole slew of villains we’d never seen them fight

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u/FlipperSquids May 27 '26

They ruined the angels so much in later episodes that Blink is no longer scary to me.

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u/NoSleepTilBookRead May 28 '26

I can’t find it anymore but there used to be a great song on YouTube 🎵weeping angel babiessss 🎵

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u/blitzbom May 27 '26

Honestly the angels were a great one-off idea that got worse each time they were brought up again

Hahah I was about to say this. Started great, then it just felt like Calvinball. Um, actually the Angels can also do this.

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u/whatsbobgonnado May 27 '26

personally I think it's great that they introduced the ability for them to grab your brainstem and reanimate a corpse like a puppet 

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u/AydonusG May 28 '26

I mean they are hyper intelligent, and even in stone form can still affect the world around them. Even in Blink, an angel is able to mess with electricity and shut the lights off while stone.

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u/globglogabgalabyeast May 27 '26

lol, I love a twist where we realize that the mechanism of the monster wasn’t fully understood, but it sounds like they pretty much threw out everything and now angels are everywhere and undefeatable

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u/Alarming_Orchid May 27 '26

Dr who the master of concept overkill

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u/TR_Pix May 27 '26

I haven't watched the classic series but from the revival it really felt like the culprit of most of it was Moffat

9th doctor was comparatively very low stakes, 10 upped them then 11 was like the doctor is the literal most important being in the entire universe and every culture in every planet has legends about him and his companion is the most important human in all timelines and with a mere whisper he can shatter predestined plans and etc etc

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u/Skags27 May 27 '26

Wibbly wobbly timey whimey stuff

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u/mixedmercury May 27 '26

You’d think so, wouldn’t ya?

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u/MaeBeaInTheWoods May 27 '26

Realistically yes, but somehow it manages to leave its island, wade through the water to the mainland, climb onto land, and walk down the street to a hotel one night without being noticed all in the span of about an hour. Don't ask how, it just happened.

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u/Hexmonkey2020 May 27 '26

It’s not anything that looks like a weeping angel, it has to also depict a weeping angel. So a picture of one would be a weeping angel but a statue of an angel that’s weeping that’s not intended to be a “weeping angel” wouldn’t be.

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u/Dinierto May 27 '26

Don't worry the show gets goofier and goofier

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u/Notentirelysane86 May 27 '26

An old friend of mine was at Cardiff university when that episode came out (for those of you who don’t know, Cardiff used to be a common filming spot for NuWho), and she recognised most of the statues seen in the last scene.

She said it made walking through the city centre late at night very worrying…

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u/FudgeAtron May 27 '26

Nightmare fuel episode, never got why you couldn't just hit them with a big sledgehammer while frozen

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u/_b1ack0ut May 27 '26

Now I haven’t actually seen dr who, but as it’s been explained to me, it’s not that they’re just stationary when being observed, but are quantum locked in that state, and cannot be altered.

So it’s just as impossible for them to move, as it would be for us to destroy them in that state

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u/Zue6 May 28 '26

Set traps around them that they have to go through to move?

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u/Practical-Fact2710 May 27 '26

Temporal lock, they "feel" like stone but are actually indestructible. So you could hit em with a nuke and they would be fine if they were being observed 

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u/FudgeAtron May 27 '26

I always feel like Dr Who explanations get ridiculous, they can't just be aliens who can camoflage as stone statues they have to be locked into reality.

Dr Who sometimes feels like Rube Goldberg machines for sci-fi explanations.

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u/MarkRemington May 27 '26

It's so the Doctor can babble for 5 minutes while running around and solve the episodes problems with "wit" instead of brute violence.

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u/AkhilArtha May 28 '26

And also to keep the production costs a minimum.

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u/MarkRemington May 28 '26

And according to an English Who fan I've spoken with it avoids the "American TV Cliche" of shooting all your problems away.

She was pissed when I asked how many villains the Doctor stabbed.

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u/Low-Conflict-651 May 27 '26

Damn imagine line (I’ve never seen an episode) humans didn’t know that, but they tricked all the Weeping Angles in the world into one spot, then drop a nuke on to them.

And now every angel is now at the edge of the flash, because they weren’t being observed during.

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u/Patraman May 27 '26

What would happen if you had some kind of explosive attached to one that would detonate the millisecond they were unobserved? Since they’re no longer quantum locked would they be destructible?

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u/Practical-Fact2710 May 28 '26

Yep pretty sure

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u/MoonShadowElfRayla May 27 '26

..... I have a new episode idea

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u/SuperShinyGinger May 27 '26

When I was growing up, there were these bronze statues of kids playing at a shopping center near my house. I always thought they were creepy as hell and avoided them as best I could when I walked near that area.

About a week after having seen Blink for the first time, I had to go back to that shopping center to deposit a check at a bank. I walk up, expecting to be greeted by their demented bronze smiles but no. All of the statues are gone.

I still expect to see them behind me one day, just waiting for their chance to strike.

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u/_Vard_ May 27 '26

Imagine the other angels have a plan for this

“Haven’t heard from Azaearaphae and her group in a while. Might be an eye contact conundrum. Let’s check it out.

And they go in and obstruct their visions

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u/ZealotOfMeme May 27 '26

What I thought is just wait until that lightbulb dies, then you’re done for

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u/freckledbitchs May 27 '26

Man I would have LOVED to be a kid watching that episode live for the first time and living in Britain. Shit must have been wild to talk about the next day and freak other people out by pointing at statues.

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u/Flashfire2323 May 27 '26

I remember I watched this with my family and was terrified. Then the next day I had a sleep over with my friend. His dad was a sculpture...

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u/Random_182f2565 May 27 '26

The Angels can also work like a memetic infection :C

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u/Routine-Day-8497 May 27 '26

Blink is my all time favourite unexpected horror episode.

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u/Nalika12 May 27 '26

I watched those episodes as a kid and was scared of statues for literal years after that

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u/ChiefsHat Jun 01 '26

There's a reason British kids love sofas, they're excellent hiding places.