10 Original Endings That Would Have Ruined Famous Movies

The Actual Ending

A montage of nuclear explosions, set to Vera Lynn's "We'll Meet Again", preceded by Slim Pickens famously riding a plummeting nuclear bomb to earth like it was a mechanical bull.

The Ending We Almost Got

A giant, joyful pie fight between world leaders in the Pentagon's War Room. And a small break from the custard-filled melee to build sand castles. Seriously. After the pressure has built to a boiling point among the politicians, the place erupts into a farce of epic proportions, with everyone launching custard pies at each other in a pretty on-the-nose metaphor for war.

There were two reasons this never made the final cut.

1) The whole vibe of Dr. Strangelove revolves around the actors treating very silly things in a deadly serious manner. So the main problem with the pie fight is that everyone involved appeared to be having too damn good of a time, and Kubrick was thoroughly disappointed with the end result. And 2) The film was test screened for audiences the day of the JFK assassination, and the scene contained the line "Our beloved president has been infamously struck down by a pie in the prime of his life!"

So, instead of what remains one of the most iconic endings of all time, we were almost left with an overzealous food fight straight out of a Three Stooges routine.