Synaptic Snaps, Crackles & Pops

Oh, snap! [Journalistic Intentions Rd 9]

The Bad Guy Wins  

Oh, snap!

Although I'm sure there are plenty of examples that predate the one I'm about to bring up—and a few are mentioned below—this trope seems tailor-made for the ending of Avengers: Infinity War. I mean, half of all the living beings in the entire Universe are just...gone! That looks like a pretty big 'W' for the bad guy, if you ask me. Of course, the ending of this particular film also meets one of the criteria for using it in the first place: setting the hook for the sequel. Justice finally prevails and the bad guy gets his in Avengers: Endgame, although not without heroic effort and the heartrending loss of a beloved hero.

The trope also mentions the possibility that the villain isn't a character, but perhaps a force or some kind (nature, for example). With that in mind, I submit the following. In Crimson Tide, Denzel Washington's character opines that "...in the nuclear world, the true enemy is war itself." If that's true, then the ending of The Bedford Incident (1965) almost certainly provides another example of the bad guy winning. Veteran actor Richard Widmark is the skipper of a destroyer on patrol and he encounters a Soviet sub. A game of cat and mouse ensues, tensions are high and the slightest mistake could be catastrophic. As the drama reaches near-breaking point, a German Navy officer questions the captain's actions, to which Widmark replies, "The Bedford will never fire first. But if he fires one, I'll fire one." An incredibly youthful looking James MacArthur—well before his tour as Danny Williams on the original Hawaii Five-O—misunderstands, launches an anti-sub rocket and announces, "Fire one!". The sub fails to avoid the American weapon, but fires a nuclear-tipped torpedo before taking the hit. The torpedo explodes and the film—and the world, presumably—ends shortly thereafter.

The Day After and On the Beach (2000) are even more grim, as they depict war's aftermath and the attendant radiation. Humanity takes a major (Day) or near-total (Beach) hit and happier days, if any are even coming, are too far in the future to guess at.