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How It Should Have Ended (HISHE) is an animated web series that parodies popular films by creating alternate endings and pointing out perceived flaws.^[1][2][3] Endings for many major films have been presented, using the tagline “Sometimes movies don’t finish the way we’d like”.

The series won the Streamy Award for Best Animated Web series at the 2nd Streamy Awards in 2010.

How It Should Have Ended began after Daniel Baxter and Tommy Watson started discussing alternate endings for a film they had watched.^[4][5] In 2005, their first animation “How Star Wars Should Have Ended” was completed and soon after in July 2005 the website was established.^[6] Christina “Tina” Alexander,^[7] who has previously worked with Baxter, joined the team shortly thereafter.

HISHE was awarded the “Best Internet Parody” award for “How Superman Should Have Ended” by Spike TV at the 2006 Scream Awards at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre in California.^[8] and was featured in an MTV Comedy and Talent Showcase at the Hollywood Improv. It has also been featured as a Yahoo! Profile Pick and has appeared in both Fade In and Wired magazines.^[9]

On March 5, 2007, HISHE was launched on YouTube as HISHEdotcom. It has attracted notable appearances such as Stan Lee himself in the parody of The Amazing Spider-Man.^[10]

In September 2009, How It Should Have Ended joined Starz Digital Media which now handles all licensing. In April 2010, How It Should Have Ended was awarded the Streamy Award for Best Animated Web Series at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles.^[11][12]

On June 30, 2013, a video was uploaded on TheFineBros channel which features the Teens React teens watching the Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and Hunger Games HISHE episodes.

In November 2013, Batman and Superman from Super Café guest starred in the Nostalgia Critic‘s review of Man of Steel, at the end of the episode where The Critic parodies Super Café. HISHE also featured in the Screen Junkies series Honest Trailers in the episodes about The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies and Star Trek Into Darkness, with HISHE in turn inviting members of Screen Junkies onboard as guest writers.

As of April 2, 2025, HISHE had 10.5 million subscribers and more than 3.3 billion views.^[13] At the same time, HISHE had amassed over 353,000 followers on its Facebook account,^[14] over 119,000 followers on its Instagram account^[15] and over 31,400 followers on its Twitter account.^[16]

The series features running gags, including, but not limited to:

• In the Super Café segments, Batman and Superman discuss the actions of characters in current or upcoming superhero films, to which Batman almost always says he can do them better “Because I’m Batman!”. Whenever an attractive female character appears in the café, Batman flirts with her by offering to reveal his secret identity.
• In Star Wars episodes (and on rare instances, episodes based on other films such as Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2) Darth Vader (or some variation of Anakin Skywalker depending on the era) gets overly giddy and excited when he finds out about his descendants or when someone’s lineage is revealed, much to the chagrin of those around him.
• In episodes themed around Captain America films, the characters tease Captain America by singing a parody of his theme song from The Marvel Super Heroes, bringing up everything that did not surrender to him in the MCU up to that point.
  • This was further referenced in the episode for Avengers: Endgame when Steve did it to Falcon after passing the mantle, and in the episode for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, by Sam and Bucky after John Walker, the government appointed Captain America, lost the shield after one of the Dora Milaje stole it.
• Characters frequently tend to reference or parody other characters played by the same actors as them. For instance, in any film featuring a character played by actor Andy Serkis (i.e. Supreme Leader Snoke from Star Wars sequel trilogy, Ulysses Klaue from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, etc.), the parody features the character with the voice of Gollum from the Lord of the Rings film series, Serkis’ best known film role.
• In some episodes about superhero films (Marvel or DC), whenever a character is about to utter a profanity in a key scene, Captain America quickly jumps in and cuts them off, exclaiming “Language!” (referencing the opening scene in Avengers: Age of Ultron where he does so to Iron Man). In one episode parodying Avengers: Endgame, the role is reversed, with Captain America nearly swearing and being cut off by Deadpool.
• In alternate endings where certain characters survive films they would have died in (e.g. Quicksilver in Avengers: Age of Ultron, Polka-Dot Man in The Suicide Squad, Aunt May in Spider-Man: No Way Home and Gilgamesh in Eternals) said character says “One of us might have died” in the aftermath.
• The Joker regularly annoying and mocking Lord Voldemort in different ways.
• In episodes for Spider-Man films, a man in a lab coat appears and says “Here’s a bright idea!”, before advising the characters in certain scenes to do something different than what they were planning to do (with more common sense), thereby alleviating the advances of the plot that would have resulted (usually with the villains coming to power). The first instance of this occurring was in the episode for Spider-Man 3, in which the man who says “Here’s a bright idea!” orders the scientists who were running the sand particle experiment to check the sand after initially believing the change in the silicon mass to be a bird. This would result in Flint Marko being arrested and preventing his transformation into Sandman.

Tubefilter ran an article covering How It Should Have Ended and discussing its fanbase.^[17]

HISHE was described by Ben Mitchell as “another revived entry in the pantheon of web series. Each episode astutely appropriates both what makes a viral film stand out (humor, topical references, accessible satire, fastpaced timing while appealing to its audience’s love/hâte relationship with pop culture)”.^[3]

Kennedy Unthank of Plugged In wrote: “Often, How It Should Have Ended's changes point out the more obvious, logical response that characters likely would have had if the movie was a bit more realistic. However, the YouTube channel’s satire is soft enough that it’s clear the point of each video isn’t to mock the movie, but to point out its flaws through constructive criticism.”^[18]

Writing for Fugues, Benoit Migneault found the versions proposed “irresistibly funny” and “sometimes touching”.^[19]

The series won the Streamy Award for Best Animated Web series at the 2nd Streamy Awards in 2010.^[20][21]

On May 12, 2015, HISHE launched a series named HISHE Features.^[22] This series aims to put the spotlight on lesser known YouTube animators or film-related channels. It is also used to bridge the gap between HISHE's own videos. The series has been a success, both in terms of views and features, which include Ricepirate, OnlyLeigh, BrotherhoodWorkshop^[23] as well as Hank & Jed. The series has however received some criticism from fans who believe the content is not up to par with HISHE's own and could therefore damage their reputation. HISHE has responded by refuting these claims stating that it is beneficial to all parties involved.

HISHE launched an additional channel called HISHE Kids, with the show Fixed Fairy Tales.

Fixed Fairy Tales is an animated series that takes classic fairy tales and gives them a new twist. The stories are narrated by a talking owl named Vincent Featherbottom, who usually tells a summary to the actual story while pointing some flaws and starts to narrate his own version of the story.

Super Café / The Villain Pub is a segment that debuted at the end of “How Superman Should Have Ended” which featured Superman discussing the alternate events of the 1978 Superman film in a café with Batman, which began the trend of Super Café. Though it is thought to be based on Seinfeld, the clips are actually based on the final scene of Daniel Baxter’s favorite film, Swingers, with Superman standing in for Trent and Batman standing in for Mike.^[24] In various superhero episodes of How It Should Have Ended, altered or added scenes are shown from the superhero film, followed by the superheroes that appear in the film interacting with Batman and Superman (both voiced by Daniel Baxter) in the Super Café; it also always appears at the end of each episode (except the HISHE episodes for Sam Raimi‘s Spider-Man trilogy, which the café was only shown at the near beginning). The Super Café segment is featured in every superhero film the series has covered so far. Superman and Batman also make a brief appearance in a café in the “How Pulp Fiction Should Have Ended”. The segment was also used in the Nostalgia Critic‘s review of Man of Steel.^[25] A companion segment called The Villain Pub which is modeled from Cheers and features many popular villains like Loki, the Joker, Voldemort, General Zod and many more began with “How Thor: The Dark World Should Have Ended”. In those segments, Emperor Palpatine is the bartender, Bowser is the bouncer (bownser), Thanos is the janitor, HAL 9000 is the security system and Jaws is the executioner. The Cheers theme song was rewritten as a theme. There are numerous running gags in the Super Café segments, the most notable being in which Batman always explains his various accomplishments and abilities or finds some kind of excuse to say his catchphrase “Because I’m Batman!”, much to Superman’s irritation. In the HISHE episode for Suicide Squad, Batman discovers the Villain Pub and in The Villain Pub's episode “The Boss Battle”, goes to confront the villains congregating there, nearly successfully, only to be tempted by Emperor Palpatine by his weakness – the ladies. It is then that Harley Quinn, who had used her vexing charms to be allowed back into the pub, knocks out Batman from behind. Batman is then taken into the cellar to be fed to the shark Jaws, who is comically depicted as talking in a high-pitched voice, chained up and stripped of his equipment. He barely escapes after being rescued by Dr. Strange, a fact that is reiterated in the HISHE episode for Doctor Strange (which also cryptically contained a spoiler for the Avengers: Infinity War trailer). Later, in the HISHE episode for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, things begin to take a turn for the dire when Ayesha, disgusted by heroes congregating in a café to meet, decides to punish superheroes whom she blames for her failure by destroying their café and unleashes her superweapon Martha (a parody of Adam Warlock, who was teased in the actual end-credits scene of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and deliberately named to taunt both Batman and Superman for their mothers having the same name). The arrival of Martha to decimate the café is foreshadowed in further videos like the HISHE episodes for Wonder Woman, Spider-Man: Homecoming and Thor: Ragnarok. At last, in the HISHE episode for Justice League, Martha (voiced by James Rallison) arrives and succeeds in his primary objective of destroying the café but upon facing the Justice League, joined by Green Lantern, who comically resembles Steve Trevor, gets his neck snapped by Superman, much to the irritation of Batman, who had wanted to take down Martha through his own plan. The café is later rebuilt by Black Panther in the HISHE episode for Black Panther. In the HISHE episode for Deadpool, Deadpool gets himself bounced from both the Super Café and the Villain Pub. He gets bounced from the Super Café because he likes killing enemies like a villain, and from the Villain Pub because he is not evil enough to be allowed there. Deadpool cannot even swear at the pub, with his attempts being given bleep censors.

Stand-alone episodes of Super Café separate from the Super Café segments of How It Should Have Ended (HISHE) episodes. Note: Each episode features Superman and Batman.

Note: Each episode features patrons the Joker,^[a] Loki, General Zod,^[b] Lord Voldemort and bartender Palpatine. Some times janitor Thanos and Khan Noonien Singh make an appearance in some episodes.

• CinemaSins

• Official website
• HISHEdotcom‘s channel on YouTube
• Video of the Streamy Awards presentation for Best Animated Web Series
• Writer of Pop: Website of the week: How it Should Have Ended