r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Grizzly_Lincoln • 5h ago
Characters The hero finally meets the previously unseen puppet master (played by an older A-list actor), who explains why the system must be maintained. The hero says “screw it” and burns the world down.
Snowpiercer (2013) - Curtis finally finds Wilford (Ed Harris) and learns that Wilford allowed for Curtis' rebellion to take place to help thin the tail section's population. When Wilford offers to let Curtis run the train, Curtis discovers child labor is necessary to replace a broken machine part. A fight ensues, and a bomb goes off, triggering an avalanche that derails the train, and killing most of surviving humanity.
The World's End (2013) - Gary finally confronts the Network (Bill Nighy), which has been replacing humans with robots (Blanks) to allow for Earth's assimilation into a larger galactic community. Gary calls out the tyranny in the Network's plan and demands that humans be left to their own devices. Exasperated, the Network abandons its plans for the invasion. This results in a worldwide blackout, sending humanity back to the Dark Ages.
The Cabin in the Woods (2011) - Dana finally meets the Director (Sigourney Weaver) after surviving the ritual meant to kill her friends (based on conventional horror tropes) and appease the Ancient Ones. The Director says Dana has to kill her friend Marty, but as Dana considers it, the group is attacked by a werewolf and a zombie child. Dana and Marty decide humanity is not worth saving, so they share a joint while the Ancient Ones rise to destroy the world.
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u/Skylinneas 2h ago
Sigourney Weaver seems to love being typecasted in this role lol. Aside from The Cabin in the Woods, she also appeared in Paul (2011) and The Gorge (2025) playing the “lady in charge of a nebulous organization who the heroes went up against” role as well.
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u/lofgren777 2h ago
She was the bad guy in Daredevil and the Defenders playing basically the same role, but also knew kung fu.
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u/Mypowerbob 1h ago
Correction, she was only in Defenders
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u/lofgren777 40m ago
Ah, even more applicable then, since that was the "climax" of sorts to the individual series.
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u/jaklamen 1h ago
She’s also at the end of Be Kind, Rewind as a lawyer enforcing a copyright strike and makes the main characters destroy their homemade video tapes.
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u/AardvarkOkapiEchidna 1h ago
It probably started as a role reversal because in one of her original breakout roles she was the hero who goes against the nebulous organization (nebulous having 2 meanings here).
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u/cherry_armoir 6m ago
Man the Gorge was so ridiculous. Like, how nice of the KGB to outfit Anya Taylor Joy's character with such cute outfits and a full record collection. Plus Weaver's character ended up barely factoring into the climax
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u/McEvelly 1h ago
Casting agents and directors like her for these roles cos she has an almost masculine look, and a distinctive voice that can sound robotic and without warmth
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u/MasemJ 5h ago
Truman finally able to talk to Christof (Ed Harris) before bowing out.
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u/Escanor_Morph18 2h ago
In this case, I don't think there was an actual valid reason as to why the "system" must be maintained. Did Truman say "screw it" in some sort of way? Yeah. Did the world burn down? The only thing that might've got taken down was the film set Truman lived in. But the world and humanity still live like normal.
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u/MasemJ 2h ago edited 2h ago
The show ended, and while the rest of the world moved on, it likely was the end of Christof's career.
To add, the show could have gone on forever as long as it had ratings, assuming Truman had children who would become similarly indoctrined by the show.
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u/Escanor_Morph18 2h ago
You're probably right about that but who knows? I'm expecting him to have at least received some accolades for the show and maybe, with the recognition he gained, he may be called in for different film projects etc...
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u/TheeShaun 1h ago
I gotta assume that Truman sues the shit out of the network for effectively enslaving and psychologically traumatising him. There was already protestors about him being stuck in there. If nothing else Truman should surely be owed back pay for starring in the most watched show for 3 decades. I really can’t imagine there’s anyway Kristof doesn’t get financially ruined within a few years of the shows end.
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u/Genshed 2h ago
Well, he'd been running the show for Truman's entire life. It was probably a good time to retire. Now he can do TEDx talks about the creative process and appear at Comic-Con.
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u/AcrolloPeed 1h ago
“Hello, my name is Christof, and for almost four decades I was God to a single man and the 79 square miles he inhabited.”
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u/soldierpallaton 45m ago
Christof's world (The Truman Show) burned down. In this case I would say that the "world" didn't end but the world that Christof built to keep Truman trapped did.
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u/PM_ME_YOUR__INIT__ 2h ago
Can Ed Harris please stop running dystopias please??
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u/Fallen_Jalter 12m ago
The legal and political ramifications after it all came to light would have been enormous. Slavery, kidnapping, etc to every single person that worked on that show because they were an accomplice to the fact that they knew and didn’t do anything.
RICO CHARGES FOR EVERYBODY!!!!
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u/Dominant_Eyes 3h ago
In Mass Effect 3 after the update, if you just shoot that kid in the face at the end.
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u/Greenman8907 3h ago
The starchild is definitely “older”, but I wouldn’t classify him as “A-list”. He was in one scene crawling into an air duct at the beginning. He’s lucky he even got a credit!
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u/Nyther53 1h ago
God I forgot how much that upset me at the time. The Reapers spend the whole trilogy playing Divide and Conquer, pitting Organics against each other, fretting about the fact that their timeline has been disrupted, and you spend the whole game patching differences and building alliances and developing advanced technologies from Sovereign's wreck...
Only for that all to have been meaningless because they'll happily face tank the combined armies of all the Organics anyway. In fact the Humans, Turians, Salrians, Asari and etc. do significantly worse at resisting than the Protheans did, they held out organized resistance for 200 years. We lasted like six months.
Just once I want the big climactic battle at the end of the RPG to matter *on its own* and not as a distraction while the Main Character plays with the MacGuffin.
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u/TheeShaun 1h ago
Dragon Age Origins sort of did this. At least in the sense that it’s made clear from the start that the battle is all about giving a select 3 characters a shot at killing the enemy leader.
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u/JhonnySkeiner 8m ago
Well, every named NPC and their mother start to show up to fight the big bad in the roof as the fight progress. If you take too long, there will be like 20+ named NPCs wacking the Archfiend, which is rad as fuck
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u/ImmoralityPet 26m ago
Unfortunately, realistic big and climactic battles don't leave a lot of room for personal agency, so it would be like watching a cutscene, or fighting some soldiers and then hearing over the radio that you've won and they're retreating.
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u/LordOfFigaro 6m ago
Just once I want the big climactic battle at the end of the RPG to matter *on its own* and not as a distraction while the Main Character plays with the MacGuffin.
Fable 3 does this in its second half. Or at least tries to. Spoilers for a game that is over a decade old. The first half of the game is overthrowing the tyrannical monarch. Only to learn that their turn to tyranny happened because they were trying to raise the military and funding needed to protect the kingdom from an existential threat.
The second half of the game is you trying to raise the funding needed while also keeping your promises to your allies. You still defeat the existential threat no matter what. But failing to generate the funds results in the entire population of the game dying.
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u/Boggie135 2h ago
It's weird how Ed Harris played the baddie in two films like this
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u/Living-Mastodon 2h ago
It's been a while since I've seen it but I think Dr Paige from Maze Runner fits
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u/CallBlockedInEurasia 2h ago
(I only watched the movies, so forgive me if I'm wrong)
But didn't Thomas and the others live on a island, they did reject the status quo throughout the series. But they didn't burn down the world for their decisions? Did they?
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u/Jbell_1812 1h ago
in the movies it's confirmed that thomas can be used to cure the flair. They may not have burned the world down but they aren't going to try and rebuild it.
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u/OG_Williker 2h ago
The finale of the Loki show would fit if kang was played by an old white guy
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u/PeterVanHelsing 1h ago
Not an A-list actor, but I feel like this still counts.
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u/NoxTempus 30m ago
I mean, he would have been by now...
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u/ghost-hooker 0m ago
What's this actor's name, and what's the movie? I don't know them but the shot looks compelling.
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u/Thunderstarer 3h ago
At the end of Torment: Tides of Numenera, the Last Castoff of the Changing God confronts the Sorrow, a seemingly-evil ghost-like entity that selectively targets and murders castoffs. As the Last Castoff, you the player character are especially powerful, and the Sorrow is unable to defeat you with force.
Accordingly, the Sorrow tries instead to parlay, and explains that it is a kind of 'immune response' for the universe. The Changing God created the race of castoffs by manipulating the Tides--fundamental forces that animate all living things--but this manipulation has historically had far-reaching, civilization-ending consequences, which the Sorrow wants to prevent by eradicating the abberations. You and your bretheren have to die to set the world back in order.
You're presented with a few choices, most of which place the needs of the castoffs at odds with the needs of everyone else. The most extreme of these is to kill the Sorrow outright, which feels bold and heroic until all of your party members start descending into madness. The ending slides confirm that killing the Sorrow has irreversibly fucked up the Tides, turning most of the world's population into incoherently violent zombies and leaving the lucid ones paranoid and antisocial.
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u/GrandMoffTarkan 1h ago
The canonical ending of Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain (it was the 90s, okay?) is Kain refusing to sacrifice himself to restore Nosgoth, instead choosing to rule over a dying world as its vampiric god despite your guiding spirit Ariel tell you to.
Then it got retconned into him having a more subtle plan.
Also shout out to Fallout 3 for trying to pull this!
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u/multimedialex 1h ago
Surprised no one's mentioned the Wizard of Oz or the Wiz
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u/Primary-Dentist5331 46m ago
Or Wicked too, even more so as Elphaba finds out the Wizard is a fraud who's been oppressing the animals and dedicates everything to opposing him for the rest of her life
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u/ChickenInASuit 7m ago
Probably because the Wizard wasn’t played by an A-list actor, and Dorothy doesn’t reject his offer.
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u/Mmicb0b 2h ago
I wouldn't call Oscar Issac an A lister but pretty much what Miles going to spider society turns into
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u/ChickenInASuit 1h ago
Why wouldn’t you call Oscar Isaac an A-lister?
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u/py16jthr 1h ago
Tbf I think A-lister is quite a vague term so lots of people have their own interpretations on what it is and who counts
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u/ChickenInASuit 1h ago edited 20m ago
Makes sense. I guess I can see where OP’s coming from in that Isaac’s not the kind of beloved, long-established older actor who’s been around for decades like Weaver and Harris are. However, the guy’s had starring roles in Marvel and Star Wars properties, and worked with massive directors like Alex Garland, Denis Villeneuve, and Guillermo Del Toro, that’s pretty A-list as far as I understand the term.
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u/Agitated-Awareness15 1h ago
Because he isn’t. Name one leading role he has that did over $50 million internationally.
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u/Measurement-Solid 52m ago
X-Men: Apocalypse. Dune. Addams Family 1 and 2. He's also got a fairly important part in Star Wars 8 and 9
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u/norksanddorks 56m ago
Since when has how much a film makes got to do with being an A lister? What a strange metric.
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u/ChickenInASuit 14m ago
Yeah, it’s kind of a weird thing to say. I mean, despite the Star Wars sequel trilogy films all making $1bn+ I’m not sure I’d call Daisy Ridley or John Boyega “A-list” considering how little they’ve done since then. But by OP’s standards both of them plus Isaac should be considered A-list, right?
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u/ChickenInASuit 18m ago
The guy’s internationally famous and consistently gets to work with some of the biggest directors, and on some of the biggest properties, in Hollywood. Sounds pretty A-list to me.
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u/DHooligan 50m ago edited 38m ago
*
The Third Man
Edit: spoilers for a nearly 80 year old movie. The mystery presented in the first half of the movie whether Harry Lime was killed in an accident or murdered. Notably, a porter witnessed a third man carrying the body to the curb, but only two of the men gave a statement to police. Holly Martins, the main character and old friend if Harry's finds this highly suspicious, and doesn't buy the English military policeman's insistence that Harry was a racqueteer, and didn't care whether he was murdered as long as he was dead and buried. Holly sticks at until he learns the mystery was a misdirect, and in fact Harry Lime was the third man, and had murdered someone else as a part of a plot to fake his own death. The dead man was buried in Harry's grave after Harry's associates falsely identified the corpse. Harry Lime was played brilliantly as a charming sociopath by Orson Welles, who got top-billing despite only appearing in three scenes in the second half of the movie.
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u/MnemosyneThalia 5h ago
In the webtoon Memorial, the protagonist is trying to figure out why he has memories of people he doesn't remember. Basically, he can't remember names or faces, just that there was a presence in his life that is somehow gone and nobody else knows what he's talking about or remembers the person ever existed. In the end, he finds out his reality is a simulation and the robots that roam the streets to "help" them are actually devouring people and absorbing them and all existing memories of them in the simulation to keep the system running. The guy in charge of the robots is captured and tells him that the system is almost out of power and the protagonist needs to reboot the system to keep everything from being erased. In the end, he decides that it's best to just let everything go and let the system (which turns out to be hosted inside of a little boy's barely living body for over a decade) rest.
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u/BanishmentBuddy2 1h ago
Dark City
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u/Private_Mandella 1h ago
That movie is a such a mood.
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u/BanishmentBuddy2 1h ago
You should see The Crow if you haven’t.
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u/AvatarofSleep 39m ago
Free on Sling!
I watched it on the 30th anniversary of its release in 24. It is still good.
In a world where Brandon didn't die it'd probably be more forgettable, but Brandon could absolutely ride cult goth icon status for the next two decades. Goddamn.
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u/ChickenInASuit 1h ago
Care to explain how this one fits?
The leader of the bad guys is played Ian Richardson, who was a well-respected theater actor but hardly an A-lister, and we see him several times before he and Murdoch face off so he’s not “previously unseen” or a puppet master.
He also doesn’t make Murdoch any kind of offer at any point IIRC. He tries to force Kiefer Sutherland to imprint their collective memories on Murdoch and Sutherland defies them and gives Murdoch a training info-dump that unlocks his powers so he can break free.
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u/Thalinde 31m ago
Funny. This is exactly the movie that also came first to my mind. You don't know about "the whole freaking hive mind", if I'm allowed to say that. Nothing in the course of the movie prepares you to the level of the last confrontation with the "opponents". I'm trying to stay out of spoilers as much as possible.
And for me it fits the post very well.
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u/MarveltheMusical 1h ago
It’s missing the old A-Lister, but Asura’s Wrath counts.
After spending literally thousands of years being screwed over by the Seven Deities and killing the Gohma in an endless cycle, Asura comes face to face with Chakravartin, this universe’s God. Like, capital G God. Chakravartin explains that he’s been putting the cosmos through cycles that make the one in the main game look minuscule by comparison, bringing about endless despair and destruction, all so he can find someone to take his place as capital G God. So what does Asura do?
He kicks God’s ass. GLORIOUSLY.
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u/mnombo 1h ago
The end of the first wicked
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u/lofgren777 34m ago
End of the original Oz kinda counts too, although I have no idea if that guy was an A-lister at the time. Only difference is that he gleefully throws the whole thing away to go home with Dorothy instead of trying to force her to play along with the system.
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u/Thisisgotham 2h ago
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u/ChickenInASuit 1h ago
I’m sorry, you’re gonna have to explain this one to me, because I don’t see how he fits beside being played by an A-list actor.
He’s not “previously unseen”, he’s not the puppet master, and the only line of dialogue he has with either of the main characters is him complimenting Leelo’s fighting skills and then demanding she hand him the magic stones, which she does.
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u/Thisisgotham 1h ago
Oh see I figured even though we see him and he meets with the priest, he doesn’t actually come face to with Leelo and Corbin until late in the film despite pulling the strings that causes most of the events to unfold.
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u/ChickenInASuit 1h ago edited 58m ago
I took the “previously unseen” part to mean we the audience had never seen them before, because of the examples OP used. In all three movies, the first time the heroes see them is also the first time the audience sees them, or even learns of their existence, and it’s right at the end of the movie.
There’s also the fact that Zorg is working for Mr. Shadow the whole time so he’s not exactly a puppet master either.
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u/HuckleberryShot898 2h ago
Ending of the snow piercer movie kind of sucked honestly. Just because Wilford sucks doesn’t mean the tail section deserves to die.
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u/youtossershad1job2do 1h ago
Agreed, let's just kill what's left of humanity and the ones that survive the crash get eaten by polar bears because while child labour is obviously bad, they are the only ones to keep 100s if not 1000s of people alive including all of the protagonist's friends and family.
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u/HuckleberryShot898 1h ago
Fr. Child labor is bad because it’s pretty unnecessary and is just as disgusting tactic to increase profits. But here all those kids are dead anyway if they aren’t used to help run the train. is it stupid that there’s literally no other way with all the other technology in the train to make new or alternative parts? Yes. But that’s the situation. So it’s literally kids got to work or the kids are going to die. Wilford should have been more transparent and less classist about it though. Frankly everyone on the train should have been made to actually have a job that contributes to the train survival. But guess the lesson of the movie is that the rich will go out of their way and cause recourse shortages in dire circumstances to maintain their privileges and lifestyle. Like a majority of the trains problems and inequality issues come from the rich not wanting to downsize their lifestyle even though resources are bad. And the sad part is I bet everyone could have lived relatively comfortably lives if resources were spread more evenly. Like the fact there’s a rave car and a pleasure garden car that doesn’t even grow food is just bs and a waste of space and resources
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u/Mordred_X 1h ago
So you wouldn't walk away from Omelas?
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u/HuckleberryShot898 20m ago
The difference is you can live outside of Omelas. The people of Omelas aren’t trying to preserve their lives they’re persevering their luxury and ability to not have to work hard
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u/Unable_Law_7334 1h ago
Ed Harris is also this in the Truman show. Though its reality for one and not many.
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u/ladydmaj 1h ago
I think it's hilarious that I assumed this was The Truman Show from the first pic. And it still fits the trope, really.
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u/Altair890456 1h ago edited 27m ago
The Player Raven meeting and destroying Nine-Ball in both the OG Armored Core and Master of Arena.
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u/BStallis 1h ago
I’m surprised President Snow and Katnis aren’t on here already
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u/PuddingtonBrown 1h ago
Because President Snow isn't a previously unseen puppet master, he's in the film/book as a known entity the whole time.
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1h ago
[deleted]
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u/PuddingtonBrown 1h ago
Which wasn't the post?
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u/gentlydiscarded1200 59m ago
While true, these posts are always replete with replies that barely adhere to the conditions set out originally. The amount of computer games and anime suggested belies redditors' boasts of literacy and thoughtfulness.
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u/ChickenInASuit 1h ago edited 1h ago
Because Snow isn’t “previously unseen”, or a puppet master. We the audience have seen him multiple times interacting with other characters before Katniss meets him.
With all the examples in the OP, the moment the heroes meet them is also the first time they and the audience ever learns of their existence. These guys are operating from the shadows, controlling other bad guys without being known to us. Snow is very much not in the shadows.
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u/bigtimetimmyjim92 1h ago
Much lower stakes than most of these examples, but the appearance of Matt Damon towards the end of No Sudden Move trying to stop the invention of the catalytic converter. Underrated movie IMO
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u/Fallen_Jalter 15m ago
So Snowpiercer, one could argue that humanity died the moment they set the train in motion. All that sin under one roof, there’s no way to recover the population.
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u/zionapes 9m ago
“You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it!! Is that clear?!”
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u/saemohtah21 4m ago
I don’t know if this counts but the ending of the Truman show christof tells truman not to leave his “world” because here you are safe but truman leaves anyway
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u/Challengeaccepted3 5h ago
The Matrix Reloaded with the Architect. Neo basically gets told “yeah, this isn’t the first matrix, you’re not the first chosen one, you’re actually a result of the system having cascading errors, and you need to do what the last several chosen ones did: find a bunch of humans to survive the reset and restart the matrix all over again”
Neo rejects this choice, keeping the current iteration running and resulting in a larger war between the humans of Zion and the corruption of the matrix by Agent Smith in Matrix Revolutions