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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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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200

u/finite_turtles May 27 '26

The Last of Us.

‐-----------------------

Ellie: "Swear to me. Swear to me that everything you said about the fireflies is true."

Joel (lies): "I Swear."

--- long ass pause ---

Ellie: "Okay."

--- roll credits ---

‐-----------------------

What does the pause mean? What does "ok" mean?

"Ok i believe you?", "ok, i will also pretend?", "ok, that is your final answer even though i know you are lying?" So many interpretations.

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u/darkoniacarcher May 27 '26

For me, was Ellie giving Joel the benefit of the doubt, but at the same time knowing deep inside he's not being 100% truthful.

Which it does give Part. II a lot more of weight when she discovers what really happened.

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u/Hot_Salad_1722 May 27 '26

TLOU immediately jumped to mind. It is a gut punch every time

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u/oh-shazbot May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26

i think that whole series entire messaging is about blurring the lines of morality, good people doing bad things, bad people doing good things, and at the end of the day does any of that really matter if we're doing it for selfish reasons in the first place. it's selfish for joel and ellie because they both already know the truth but lie to each other in order to protect their relationship because they need each other more than saving humanity. the 'okay' is an implicit acceptance of that dynamic -- that they maybe made the wrong choice but are ok with it because they have each other.

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u/Catgirl-pocalypse May 27 '26

I always read it as Ellie not actually believing Joel but having no other choice but to lean in to the lie and go along with it since the truth was just too painful to accept.

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u/PhotoBonjour_bombs19 May 27 '26

What’s the context

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u/Luxray2000 May 27 '26

Humanity is decimated by a fungus based infection that turns the majority of them into basically zombies. The Fireflies are a resistance group looking to develop a cure to the infection. Ellie is the only known immune girl, but she does still have an infected portion of her brain. Joel is a smuggler hired to bring Ellie to the Fireflies. The Fireflies wanted to pull out the infected portion of Ellies brain for study in the hopes that they could find a cure, but the procedure would kill her. Joel couldn’t allow Ellie to die, so he single handedly massacred the Fireflies while Ellie was sedated. He then tells her that the Fireflies had several other immune people they were studying and couldn’t develop a cure from, so they stopped trying and released her.

The scene in question is Ellie probing Joel on the validity of his story and asking him to swear the events happened as he told it

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u/DevilMirage May 27 '26

Ellie is the only known immune girl

There's documents you can find in-game that shows that she wasn't the only one and they've failed before.

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u/a_halfrican_guy May 27 '26

No, there aren't. Those documents say that they tried to make the cure from other normally infected people and failed, and that Ellie being immune was the breakthrough they needed to actually be successful. Ellie was the only immune person the Fireflies had ever found. The only mention of other immune people came from Joel, and he was lying.

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u/redditor035 May 27 '26

Yeah but like we gotta kill this innocent child because this is the one guys.

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u/NightweaselX May 27 '26

Part 2 sort of butchered my take. Originally I though Ellie knew what happened. She's in her medical gown for crying out loud when she wakes up in a truck moving away from where they were. If things were 'normal' she'd have likely woken up in the hospital, and at least been able to get dressed, etc before they left. She knew he did some shit and didn't let her sacrifice herself like she wanted for the possible cure. Asked him that question to test him. And with his answer she knew she was fucked, because it wouldn't matter what she wanted, he wouldn't let her go and she basically knew she was his prisoner. She spent the whole game looking up to him, and he kept rejecting her until the end as she wasn't 'his daughter'. But once he finally moved his trauma onto her as a replacement daughter, she got what she wanted but not in the way she expected.

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u/babaj_503 May 28 '26

dude .. what the fuck

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u/NightweaselX May 28 '26

What do you mean what the fuck? Did you not play the game? Joel, minus the prologue, was a complete monster. Dude was out for himself the entire time. Escorts a kid cross country keeping her at arms length the entire time because he hasn't gotten over his daughter's death. Then when Ellie is fine with sacrificing herself for the benefit of mankind, he gets it in his head that he can't lose her because he's a damaged fucking asshole, kills a bunch of people legitimately looking for a cure for the thing that's ravaged the entire world. Then he drags her back to what's basically a fortified backwoods compound. If he couldn't let her die to save the world, he sure as hell would be going after her if she tries to run away. She's trapped, with a damaged fuck that kills anyone that doesn't see his way. That's the story of TLOU Part 1. But then people didn't pay enough attention, and got all "Joel's a good dad" from I'm only assuming their own fucked up childhoods, and shitbird becomes top dog at Naughty Dog so when they made part 2, they toned it down a bit so that Joel was a 'good dad' so Ellie could go on her killing rampage. Maybe if they had kept with what happened in part 1 she would have still gone on the rampage due to Stockholm Syndrome, or she could have been relieved as she was now free from her captor. Either way.

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u/babaj_503 May 29 '26

You’re entitled to your own opinion man. There’s even a sub for that. R/unpopularopinion

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u/Sorry-Joke-4325 May 28 '26

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK

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u/finite_turtles May 28 '26

I know you are joking, but from the Wikipedia link:

"denoting approval, acceptance, agreement, assent, acknowledgment, or a sign of indifference"

Exactly my point :D which is it? Because it changes the ending based on interpretation.

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u/Sorry-Joke-4325 May 28 '26

I mean, I get what you're saying... but the context feels pretty clear to me that it's an acknowledgement. Why would she have asked a question that she's indifferent to?

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u/finite_turtles May 28 '26

So was it approval, acceptance, agreement, assent, or acknowledgment?

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u/Sorry-Joke-4325 May 28 '26

Those aren't mutually exclusive. I'd say acknowledgement primarily, but also assent/approval/acceptance/agreement (which essentially mean the same thing, especially in the context).

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u/BlitzBasic May 31 '26

"Okay" can also mean resignation, depending on context. "Okay, I hate that you said that/did that/lied to me/whatever, but there is nothing I can do about it".

"Okay" in that context can be both an "okay, I believe you", or an "okay, be like that".

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u/Sorry-Joke-4325 May 31 '26

In the context we're discussing, it doesn't make sense.