15 Important Canonical Developments That Happened After the Story Wrapped Up

Ah, there’s nothing like a happy ending in a movie. The two impossibly attractive leads beat the baddie, solve the mystery and have a lovely big kiss. The funny friend discovers the magic baseball glove wasn’t really magic, and the magic was inside them all along. The evil senator’s scheme to close the community center is thwarted! Everyone lives happily ever after, and it’s great.

Except, two years later, a sequel comes out and, due to one of the actors doing too well to return, their character is announced to have died in the interim. Oh nooooooo! Or the movie-ending romance that seemed like it would absolutely stand the test of time is just, kinda, not going on anymore, so that the character can spend another movie trying to get laid.

In an ideal world, we’d see these things happen — they’re surely quite important parts of the story — but we frequently just don’t. It’s easier not to — it involves fewer people. Fewer people is easier. So instead we just get, “Hey gang, great to see you all again, sorry Craig died, let’s get adventuring!”

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15 Xander Cage’s Most xXx-treme Stunt of All: xXx-piring

Vin Diesel didn’t want to do the second xXx, so was killed off-screen. A death was filmed, using a stunt double seen from behind, but only ended up on DVD. It all worked out — Diesel returned for a third film.

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14 RIP-ley

At the end of Aliens, Ripley and her surrogate daughter Newt escape, along with Hicks and Bishop. At the beginning of Alien3, only Ripley is still alive — the escape pod crashed between films and killed everyone else. Hey, that’s bleak!

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13 Daniel-san Becomes Daniel-single

After the end of The Karate Kid, but before The Karate Kid Part II gets started, Daniel-san’s girlfriend breaks up with him and his mom moves away. Awwww.

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12 Many X-Men X-Pire

Between X-Men: First Class and X-Men: Days of Future Past, about half the first film’s cast are casually mentioned to have been killed by Magneto. A decade has passed between films, but still, everyone’s very chill about it all.

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11 Here Come the Men in Black… Just the Men Actually

At the end of Men in Black, Linda Fiorentino’s character has joined the agency as Agent L, but she’s nowhere in the sequel. This is supposedly due to Fiorentino and Tommy Lee Jones clashing, and the producers siding with Jones.

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10 ‘Step Up 2’: The Fickle Nature of Being Employed As A Dancer

Step Up: Revolution, like all good dance crew films (a maligned and under-respected genre), ends with the main pair getting together and the whole crew getting well-paid dancing gigs. By Step Up: All In, they’ve split up and everyone’s shitcanned.

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9 Charlie’s Angels: Full Squabble

Bill Murray and Lucy Liu butted heads so much filming Charlie’s Angels that the sequel features an all-new Bosley (Bernie Mac). There’s a half-hearted explanation that Murray’s character was Mac’s adopted brother, but it’s all treated as unimportant, correctly.

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8 Nutty Professor II: The Dumped

The Nutty Professor ends with Sherman Klump (Eddie Murphy) getting together with Carla Purdy (Jada Pinkett). However, she’s gone by Nutty Professor II: The Klumps, suggesting either (a) his inner beauty wasn’t enough; or (b) they just… didn’t get on?

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7 Keanu Leaves

At the end of Speed, Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock decide to base their new relationship on sex. (Phwoar.) It doesn’t pan out, apparently, as by Speed 2: Cruise Control — the one on a boat that is so, so bad — he’s long gone.

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6 Die-a LaBoeuf

Indiana Jones’ polarizing son in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Shia LaBoeuf’s Mutt Williams, is announced in the follow-up Dial of Destiny to have died in Vietnam. It adds gravitas, and means everyone got to avoid being around Shie LaBoeuf.

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5 Lone Survivors? Not Anymore

1999’s The House on Haunted Hill sees just two characters make it to the end credits. The straight-to-video sequel begins with a new character learning they killed themselves. Really makes you wonder what the point of anything is, ever.

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4 Jean-Claude Van oh Damme He Didn’t Make It

At the end of Kickboxer, the problematically-nicknamed Kurt “White Warrior” Sloane defeats his rival Tong Po, avenging his brother. Then, some time before Kickboxer 2 begins, he just kinda… dies, because Jean-Claude Van Damme didn’t want to come back.

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3 In Space, No One Can Hear You Leave

Prometheus ends with David (Michael Fassbender) and Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) in a ship. By the time the sequel, Alien: Covenant begins, David has, er, long murdered Shaw. Dude. Not cool.

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2 Romance Is Dead, Just Like Bernie

Weekend at Bernie’s II begins the Monday after the weekend, yet somehow the romance between Jonathan Silverman and Catherine Mary Stewart’s characters has come to an end, and the vacation they were going on together just didn’t happen. Sad really.

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1 Wahlberg Misses the Mark Romantically

Ted ends with Mark Wahlberg and Mila Kunis’ characters getting together, Walhberg having grown up and all that stuff. Then, by Ted 2, they’re divorced and he’s single again, because the plot demands it. Really cheapens a rewatch of Ted.