Fade to Black

"So...what do we do now? If this were one of my shows, this would be a wrap."

- Rise, Persona 4

A means of denoting the end of a scene by steadily and quickly reducing the image brightness until the entire screen is flat black. Its inverse, Fade In, reverses the process to bring a scene into view from a black screen. A fade from one scene to another is called a Dissolve. Sometimes the screen will Fade to White instead.

Extremely common in movie trailers, and often used at an Act Break.

Sometimes used to mean declining to describe a sex scene in textual media; for that, see Sexy Discretion Shot.

Film

 * Waynes World fades to black in the credits then fades back in so Wayne and Garth can talk some more. After a few of these fade back ins one of them comments that when they want them to stop talking they'll just fade out and it will stay that way. Then the credits fade to black again for a prolonged period and Garth declares, "I can't believe they did that!"
 * The X-Files: Fight the Future: At the end of the Antarctica sequence. The screen stays black for so long that some people seeing it for the first time thought this was the end of the movie.
 * Recess Schools Out:
 * Right after the Sad Times Montage for T.J. after his friends leave for camp, then fades back into the next morning.
 * After Mikey faints from seeing the satelite come out of the school for the first time.

Live-Action TV

 * Stargate SG-1: In "200", Martin mentions that Act 3 "just ends" due to budget cuts, during act three of the actual episode. Although the show normally fades to black, this time it did a hard cut to black, as a nice bit of metahumor.
 * Firefly: FOX has software that automatically runs commercials over any black screen to eliminate the Fade to Black in favor of more advertising time. Joss Whedon felt that a moment of black at the end of one act of the pilot episode was important enough for the dramatic tension to salvage, so he had it fade to the darkest brown possible that wouldn't be picked up by FOX's computers.
 * In some countries whenever a news program reports on the recent death of a very famous person, the report ends with a fade to black before proceeding to the next story. Some Russian weekly news programs also use this in their end-of-the-year broadcasts, where they include a slide show of photos of the celebrities that died during the year.

Web Original

 * One of James Rolfe's top 10 movie cliches.

Western Animation

 * Wile E Coyote and The Road Runner sometimes treats the black screen as a stage curtain that can be lifted or peered around. An entire cartoon was made up of "blackout gags"; brief, self-sustained skits that fade out after the punchline and fade into the next. The term originated in Vaudeville, where the lights were turned off after each joke to punctuate the humor and give the audience a pause for laughing.
 * Winx Club has these at least every two minutes or so.
 * The Pink Panther cartoon "Pink Outs" is made up of blackout gags, except the screen fades to pink instead.
 * Doug: The three twenty-four-minute Nickelodeon episodes and all of Disney's episodes used this right before a commercial.
 * Any twenty-four-minute episodes of 101 Dalmatians: The Series used this before a commercial, and sometimes used in various episodes for a scene transition.
 * Recess does a fade to black right after the theme song ends. This also ends certain epsisodes when they don't use an Iris Out.