Left Hanging

"''"So what now? It's plain to see we're over ''And I hate when things are over When so much is left undone""

- Deep Blue Something, "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (song)

""Get used to disappointment.""

- The Man in Black, The Princess Bride

The special feeling that you get when you've watched a show and realized that an unusually large number of loose ends have been left dangling.

This special feeling is usually preceded by a glance at the clock, noting that it is 9:54, and saying, "Wow, they sure have a lot of loose ends to wrap up in the next six minutes. I wonder how they pull it off?" The answer: they don't.

Some shows, such as The X-Files, actually used the principle of Left Hanging order to build an aura of mystique and uncertainty around the show. When shows that are more grounded in reality, such as CSI, wander into this territory, the results are rarely pretty.

Occasionally the loose ends that are Left Hanging are picked up on much later, either as part of a Lampshade Hanging or as an "untold story" in the Expanded Universe. If, on the other hand, they're picked up later in a serious way, they might fit one of Chekhov's tropes; if the entire episode is redeemed by one of more of these, it qualifies as an Innocuously Important Episode.

See also No Ending and What Happened to the Mouse?. Let the Kudzu Plot grow out of hand, and you have The Chris Carter Effect. If it was going to be explained, but the intended story was canceled, it's an Aborted Arc.

It should be noted that a few of these examples are merely early plot lines that are abandoned once the main plot is kicked off. Why bother tying up loose ends on one matter when they have The End of the World as We Know It to deal with?

Sometimes the result of being Screwed by the Network. This will lead to Canon Fodder and, thus, Fanfic Fuel. See also Cut Short.

Anime and Manga

 * Baccano!! wraps up everything which concerns episodes 2 to 16, but the very first episode is a mash up of future events in the show, where there's a particular short scene where a blond girl slices Issac's ear off with a spear. The girl's name, Adele, is not even mentioned through the show as she would later appear in a future arc from the source material right after where the anime ends.
 * The loose ends are lampshaded in the OVAs, where Carol asks Gustav why the story doesn't have a proper ending. Gustav's answer is that life always throws in another plot thread for everyone it ties up, meaning that there's going to be loose threads no matter where you stop, and now's just a good place as any to end things. Carol, on the other hand, thinks it's just a Sequel Hook.
 * The Big O. Everything is left hanging. Everything. Maybe it's the author's love of Mind Screw, maybe it's the lack of a followup season. No matter what, a lot is left hanging.
 * Full Metal Panic!! resolves its main plot, but leaves hanging a number of plot threads, most importantly the precise origin of The Whispered and the Black Technology that seems to be encoded in their genetic structure. One might presume the new season of Full Metal Panic!, "The Second Raid", would answer some of the unresolved issues. Nope.
 * That said, the source material is still going; while there's no absolute guarantee it'll be dealt with, resolving these issues would require making something up just to end the anime.
 * The origin of The Whispered has been answered in the novels, and Word of God stated there's more of the anime coming after their conclusion.
 * Also see Variable Geo, and how it doesn't resolve the whole deal with the tournament it's centered upon.
 * The Narutaru anime cuts off the second half of the story, leaving the entirety of the dragons—where they come from, why they're here, everything—hanging, the Government Conspiracy that's seemingly studying them is Left Hanging, and the 'villains' that needlessly kill people with them and talk of making a better world vanish off the face of the earth—mind you, they were so badly characterized nobody cares much anyhow. And wraps it all up with a Shoot the Shaggy Dog ending.
 * Possibly, they just couldn't stomach what was coming afterwards.
 * Genshiken - both the anime and the manga, but for different reasons. In the anime, material was added for the second series to ensure enough was left for a third series, but there's no guarantee there ever will be one to finish the job. The manga has the "life goes on"-No Ending that is so typical for Slice of Life series, so it was almost inevitable that not everything got wrapped up.
 * Trinity Blood Overtook the Manga, and the manga seems to in turn have overtaken the Light Novels on which it was based. The death of the original author didn't help matters. Bottom line is that the ending of Trinity Blood anime failed to wrap up any long-running plot threads whatsoever.
 * Parodied / Lampshaded (like a bazillion other tropes) in Ninin ga Shinobuden. Onsokumaru and another character have an ominous conversation about Shinobu's hidden destiny. In the last episode the characters realize they forgot all about this plot thread and hastily construct a Magical Girl story to cover.
 * Mari's fate in the Blue Drop anime after is never addressed, not even in the huge time skip at the end of the series. This is especially egregious, since  sacrificed herself to save Mari's life, so it would at least have been nice to know how Mari dealt with it.
 * YDNWTK. Mari's outlook is bleak. The Arume will be unpleasantly interested in her and the humans will take a dim view of her
 * A variety occurs in Koi Koi 7, where everything is set up for the final battle with the Big Bad—only to have everybody inexplicably relax on a beach in the last episode. An attempt is made to explain what happened in a short DVD-only episode, but it's still one heck of a sudden turn.
 * Spiral is a mystery series, and its main mysteries are "What are the Blade Children?" and "What happened to Kiyotaka, Ayumu's older brother?" The anime never answers either of these questions, as the manga hadn't yet by the time it finished production. An offhand comment by Kanone might or might not imply that Kiyotaka is dead in the anime continuity, and another compares the Blade Children to cuckoos, but that's it.
 * Most of Piano is about Miu composing a piece for her piano recital. At the big moment, the story simply cuts off when Miu starts playing, without stating how the recital went or what happens between Miu and her love interest afterward. Sure, the main point is Miu's decision about her music and her life, but it would have been nice to get some more closure.
 * A particularly infamous example of this is Ranma ½; the anime version, already criticized for being stuffed to the brim with Filler that had absolutely no bearing on the original manga plot, concluded a full three years before the original manga did, cutting out roughly a full third of the overall plot. For those without easy access to the manga (which, as a note, did not finish officially releasing in English-speaking countries until 2006, ten years after the conclusion of the manga in the original Japanese), this was kind of a huge kick in the pants.
 * To be fair, the manga had also transmuted into a mostly episodic comedy around the same point and had just as much of a Non Ending as the anime did- in fact, the anime's ending might actually be considered better, seeing as how it ends on a fairly high note (Ranma and Akane getting along, Ranma swearing to find a cure so he can prove himself to his mother), whereas the manga ends with Ranma and Akane's wedding being an utter disaster and the two sniping at each other in the same way they had been doing through the entire series.
 * Code Geass actually resolved its main premise, but several subplot threads were apparently lost in the rush or deemed less important somewhere between seasons as the staff had to alter their original plans due to an unexpected time slot change. They include the true nature of Suzaku's superhuman abilities, C.C.'s real name and, perhaps most frustratingly for several viewers, any sort of official explanation for the Geass.
 * Martian Successor Nadesico does this twice at least in America- first, the series ends with only a bare acknowledgment of how the war ended, then they made The Movie which takes place after a Time Skip, doesn't explain the war's end either, and ends on its own cliffhanger (it was meant to be the first part of a movie trilogy which was never finished). The first hanger was only resolved through information which is All There In The Japan-Only Sega Games.
 * The last episode of the series even has the audacity to introduce new subplots just to intentionally leave them hanging. (Not knowing about the games, I thought it was something of a joke, and actually did find it kinda funny)
 * The first Mahou Sensei Negima anime fell into this hard, mainly because it was supposed to go for two seasons, but the general lack of quality and pure Off-Model-ness got it killed after one season, forcing a Gecko Ending and dropping a bunch of newly introduced plot threads. Not that two seasons would have come close to covering everything in the manga, but starting a bunch of B-plots and then ending the series two episodes later is pretty bad.
 * The manga hits the same issue and tries to at least resolve as much as it can in the very last chapter and only succeeds partially.
 * And more importantly,
 * Due to the Gecko Ending of the anime, Venus Versus Virus didn't end well.
 * Kare Kano: Everything was left hanging. EVERYTHING. The play that they built up for 6 or 7 episodes never happened, there was no culture fest, and the only way to actually understand what happened between  in the final episode was to read the manga.

Comic Books

 * Paperinik New Adventures, full stop. Among the things left hanging:
 * Issue #20, "Mekkano": the eponymous machine, which can break down any other machine for parts and add it to itself, is picked up in Earth Orbit by an alien spaceship, which takes it back to their base. Never seen or mentioned again.
 * Issue #24, "Twilight": the issue's Big Bad, just after proclaiming that . Moreover, Neither plot points come up again.
 * Issue #25, "Crossfire": Paperinik meets up with what is, essentially, La Résistance within the Evron Empire. They never show up again.
 * Issue #40, "A Single Breath": it's pretty much stated outright in the ending that Where did he end up? No one knows.
 * Next Men ended with a cliffhanger in #30. Byrne had intended to conclude the story in a second series, but the collapse of the American comic book industry in the mid-1990s made it financially unfeasible for him to do so.
 * Everybody remember Crossgen Comics? When the company folded, they promptly ended every single comic mid-story, right when the overall plot was reaching its apex. There is hope, however... Marvel Comics recently announced that they plan on publishing Crossgen titles, although whether this means backlog or new content is up for grabs.
 * DC Comics' Star Raiders graphic novel was truncated to half its length due to a cancelled contract; many secondary characters and plot points were Left Hanging as a result.

Fan Works

 * In the Harry Potter fanfic White Knight, Grey Queen, many plans that Harry has set in motion are abandoned due to the acceleration of events after Nott's capture and interrogation: training the D.A. up to a proper force, the use of thestrals as war horses and other ideas are left half- or even un-implemented, with Hermione even commenting on this. At the end of the story, when Voldemort is defeated and the Death Eaters are wiped out, Harry has essentially become the new Leader of the Light... but every other plan and plot thread set in motion during the course of events -- the Harry/Pansy/Ginny triad, Remus' campaign for Minister, the secession of the House Elves, basically all of the revolution that Harry and the Parkinsons have been planning for most of the story -- are all left unaddressed.

Film

 * In-universe example: In Toy Story 2, Woody learns his TV show from the 1950s, Woody's Round-Up, was left hanging during a cliffhanger in the final episode because low ratings caused its cancellation.
 * Gamera III: Revenge of Iris is titled Incomplete Struggle, and ends with the eponymous turtle badly wounded in the midst of a burning city with a horde of Gyaos about to descend upon him.
 * The fate of the Phantasm series - the fourth film ends in a cliffhanger where Mike and Reggie enters Tall Man's world. That was in 1998, and fans are still waiting for a conclusion. And Angus Scrimm isn't getting any younger.
 * The Lion King: Although an interlude in Hakuna Matata explains why Pumbaa became an outcast, nothing is said about Timon's past even though you'd expect there to be a pretty good reason for a meerkat to live outside a colony.
 * In a deleted (and subsequently never-animated) verse from Hakuna Matata, it was shown that Timon was kicked out of the colony for being lazy. This was retconned in The Lion King 1½, in which Timon leaves the colony after feeling like an outcast.
 * Another in-universe example: In Galaxy Quest, the last episode of the titular show when it was cancelled ended on a cliffhanger, with Captain Taggert shouting "Activate the Omega-13!".

Literature

 * Serial mystery novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood was Left Hanging by Author Existence Failure when Charles Dickens died
 * The Charles Sheffield sci-fi novel Cold as Ice follows this trope to ridiculous extremes as the writer tells the story of several, unconnected main characters. One of these, a standard End of the World plot, is resolved in the main story. The others are swiftly, and without explanation, dealt with in the Epilogue.
 * The epilogue is more of a Sequel Hook, except it is not intended to be followed by an actual sequel, but rather to take the sci-fi up a notch and end the book with a bang, letting the reader imagine what could follow, rather than tying up all loose end. Charles Sheffield does this in several of his books. It is a bit like a beefed up sci-fi/literary version of the Truck Driver's Gear Change.
 * Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows leaves the fate of the evil witch Dolores Umbridge up in the air after she is placed in a high level of the government after the Death Eaters take over. J.K. Rowling soon came out and said that Umbridge was prosecuted and imprisoned.
 * Raymond E. Feist's Riftwar Legacy series, which was left unfinished due to copyright issues, since two of the three books were novelisations on Riftwar-based video games. The events that presumably happen during the finale of that series have been referenced in later books, but it is uncertain whether the books will actually ever be written.
 * The Brothers Karamazov, on any number of plot points. We've all learned a lesson, though, so they don't need to be cleared up for us.
 * A Series of Unfortunate Events never officially explains what the Sugar Bowl secret is, they never explain who actually burned down the Baudelaire mansion... In fact, the series ends with a note that basically says, Real Life is full of mysteries. Get over it.
 * Johnny Truant's narrative in House of Leaves ends with an anecdote he once heard about a mother who spent all of three days with a newborn child doomed to die. . The Navidson Record ends on a higher note, but that's little consolation.
 * The fourth book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series ends with a quite literal Left Hanging.
 * Apparently, the author's reason for splitting book four in the first place came about as an attempt to avoid this - the books were meant to do a five-year Time Skip after Book Three, but due to the overabundance of storylines and characters he felt it would be better to continue in the present and avoid the difficulty of flashbacks. As it is, the fates of several notable characters - both major and supporting - have yet to be revealed or explained in detail.
 * The final book of K.A. Applegate's Animorphs ended this way by introducing a new antagonist with absolutely no desire from the author to go further with it (she even admits to leaving the reader hanging in the afterword).
 * Another series by Applegate that ended with the readers left hanging was Everworld, which abruptly cuts off with numerous subplots, and even the main story itself, mostly unresolved. Plot threads left dangling include:
 * In The Neverending Story many subplots are deliberately left unresolved: "But that is another story, to be told another time."
 * Piers Anthony had a book called Mute which created an entire well-defined and intriguing universe, with complex characters and hinted-at half-revealed plans, ended it on an unresolved plot Cliff Hanger... and then dropped it. Word of God is that he's not going to pick it up again, ever.

Live-Action TV

 * 24 has an unfortunate tendency to simply abandon important secondary characters and leave their fates hanging; examples include Rick from season 1; Miguel, and Lynne Kresge from season 2; Andrew Paige and (quite egregiously) Behrooz Araz in season 4; and former President(!) Charles Logan in season 6.
 * Which was all the more annoying seeing as the Fox network advertised that episode as the "most shocking 24 yet" (or something similar). If you're gonna milk your end of episode twist how about rewarding the viewers with a plot resolution guys.
 * Now and Again - final episode of the first (and only) season ends with most of the plot strands resolved and a brand new bunch just springing out in the last five minutes.
 * Star Trek: The Next Generation, in the Groundhog Day Loop episode. When the loop breaks, they find out that their collision partner is a ship—captained by Kelsey Grammer—that is a full century out of date, the USS Bozeman. It was never mentioned on the show again, but dialogue references to a ship named "Bozeman" popped up in both Star Trek: Generations and Star Trek: First Contact, and it was the subject of a (non-canon) novel.
 * Assuming that wasn't a later USS Bozeman as Starfleet tends to keep reusing ship names, assuming they didn't retire the name due to the missing nature of the earlier vessel.
 * Kelsey Grammar reprised his role to provide the single word spoken over the comm by the captain of the Bozeman in First Contact.
 * TNG also left the fate of Enterprise-C and the alternate timeline Tasha Yar hanging in "Yesterday's Enterprise". Did they succeed in their mission, or die senseless deaths? All we knew is that they passed back into the phenomenon and restored Enterprise-D to its original timeline, with only Guinan aware of the entire affair. It wasn't until much later (several seasons) that the fate of Tasha Yar was learned.
 * The 2000s Battlestar Galactica has a reputation for not leaving plot threads unresolved, though due to the sheer number of threads ongoing in any episode some tend to be dropped due to lack of time or neglect. Examples include Boxey in Season 1, who was left on the cutting room floor after two episodes, and "Shelly Godfrey", a Number Six hiding within the civilian fleet who is never seen again after her sole appearance. (Notably, Helo's storyline was intended to be abandoned after the pilot miniseries, but was maintained due to popular demand.) Apparently, Shelly Godfrey will eventually be explained, in "The Plan". However, the Opera House itself (not the visions), the original temple on the Algae Planet, and the exact nature of the Lords of Kobol seem destined to remain in the file marked Left Hanging. Not to mention "God" . ..
 * Many fans thought that Shelly Godfrey was just Head Six who had materialized herself to help Baltar, but The Plan shows that she was a real Six trying to discredit him. Cavil and another, cooler Six intimate that she made it too easy to discover her fake evidence because of Baltar's "dreamy hair".
 * Seems like we'll never find out now what was going on with that damn spy pen in Veronica Mars...
 * Firefly's abrupt cancellation left a number of plot threads dangling. Though many of them, particularly River's psychosis and the origins of the Reavers, were covered in The Movie, many more, such as Book's past, were left in the air.
 * But are being concluded in the comics, Book in particular gets a trilogy devoted to his past.
 * Stargate SG-1 ends with an episode that makes no attempt to resolve any of its plot lines. Of course, given the many times they were Absolutely Finally About To Be Canceled and got renewed again, it could be that The Powers That Be didn't know it was for real this time. At any rate, a Wrap It Up movie, Stargate: The Ark of Truth, came out and resolved the Ori plotline, and was followed up by Stargate: Continuum. A third movie was announced, but seems to be stuck in Development Hell.
 * And a canonical MMORPG, and concepts for another series... Interestingly however, Stargate: The Ark of Truth seemed to be quite deliberate in avoiding stating 'Yes, the .' Events from the final SG1 episode remain, for instance the presence of the, but there is no reference to the . Oddly though, they are stated as an intended playable race in the MMORPG, which takes place some time after the upcoming movies - supposedly a significant amount of time, despite, again, being allegedly canonical.
 * Takes place at the end of season six, actually. And is now possibly canceled.
 * Stargate is a prime example of this trope in general. Especially in the first seasons there were a lot of plotlines opened that were just left hanging. For example Daniel's grandfather as ambassador with an alien super race is never again heard from. Or the time they found a device with the recorded knowledge of all the ancient races on a planet where the gate plunges into the ocean is never visited again as soon as the SGC has ships. You should think something like this would be of value enough to fly there, especially since the planet was very close to Earth.
 * Let's not even begin with the Ford storyline in SGA.
 * In all fairness, that was probably intentional.
 * Sliders ends similarly, with a finale that ends on a cliffhanger, with a few but not all plot threads updated if not resolved. There was also talk of a Wrap It Up movie for that one, but it never got beyond the talk phase.
 * Red Dwarf ends with a sci-fi cliffhanger involving Rimmer kicking Death in the groin with the rest of his cast members are in a mirror universe, while the ship was being eaten slowly by a genetically engineered virus.
 * The new 3-parter on Dave 10 years later does noting to resolve this, as it's set, well, 10 years later.
 * Lampshaded/subverted with the end of Season 2. Season 2 ended with Dave pregnant with twins fathered by a female version of himself from a mirror universe. Season 3 opened with a Star Wars Crawl that explained it all away, but was too fast to read.
 * The ending of the TV miniseries The Lost Room appears to totally forget about the fates of Detective Bridgewater and Dr. Ruber.
 * The Fox sci-fi series Space: Above and Beyond ended its one season run with an awful lot of loose ends left unwrapped. The show ended with one character presumed dead, two more falling in an escape pod into enemy territory, one reunited with his prisoner-of-war lover, and everyone else generally in limbo.
 * 90210 started off as a series that involved both the old gang (the ones from the 90s) and a new fresh almost entirely unrelated (except for the half-sister of the franchise protagonist). For instance, it was revealed that, but as the show changed executives, it was decided that it wouldn't rely on the old gang any longer (except for Kelly, who's now been downgraded to recurring supporting character), leaving the whole thing about   in the air.
 * The popular sitcom Titus was canceled before they could write a proper episode to conclude the series. While the last episode was good and funny, it ended with
 * An episode of The Office dealt with Dwight finding a joint in the parking lot and becoming more paranoid than ever as he tries to find the culprit. By the end this morphs into Dwight covering for Michael, who had accidentally inhaled some pot smoke the night before, leaving the question of how the joint itself got there unanswered.
 * It's revealed in a deleted scene that it's two employees from Vance Refrigeration.
 * Dwight never finds the man who flashed Phyllis, either.
 * Kamen Rider Kabuto:
 * In Phil of the Future, after Phil and Keely get together, the Diffys head back to the future, only to turn around for the cavemen Curtis. Then it ends...forever.
 * Due to Executive Meddling.
 * The cliffhanger at the end of season 2 of Lost did not become relevant until near the end of Season 3. It was not directly referenced and resolved till the end of the fourth season. On the plus side, you can take it as evidence disproving that the writers are making it up as they go along.
 * Name a high-concept Sitcom from The Sixties. Lost in Space, Gilligan's Island, and many others were summarily canceled when the time came, even after a successful run and regardless of whether or not the show featured An Arc, simply because that's how business was done at the time.
 * A lot of them eventually got Wrap It Up movies once they'd had enough time in syndication to get interest back up.
 * Twin Peaks. Perhaps David Lynch thought that by leaving every single subplot sadistically hanging on multiple cliffs that the fans would scream and cry for another season in which to see them all resolved. If such was the case, then the tactic didn't work as the show was canceled with little fanfare and with much grumping by the small devoted fanbase the show had.
 * Don't forget that apart from the subplots, the main plot wasn't really resolved with the "How's Annie!" ending either.
 * In the Cracker episode "One Day A Lemming Will Fly",
 * Kyle XY left many plots dangling (although Word of God cleared up a few of them). In fact, the finale actually introduced a new plotline in the last few seconds of the episode!
 * The Sarah Connor Chronicles ends with
 * Farscape had, initially, one of the most evil Left Hanging endings ever. Knowing they were going to be canceled, the writers extricated the crew from the worst of the crap they were buried in, and set them on a planet to recuperate. This left some of the major arcs unfinished, but hey, we can deal with that, right? So there they are, recuperating.  Luckily, there was enough fan pressure that a tv miniseries, the Peacekeeper Wars, was eventually made and tied up the remaining loose ends.
 * This was Executive Meddling. The show had been renewed for another season, where the cliffhanger was supposed to have been resolved. However, at the time the Sci-Fi channel was easily spooked into hitting the cancellation button, and production difficulties and fluctuating ratings for the fourth season caused them to kill the show anyway. The true Left Hanging moment is in the realization that they had enough time to cut off just before the Cruel Twist Ending, but instead opted to punch the viewers in the face and draw an Internet Backdraft of incredible scale. On the other hand, though, if not for the storm of complaints they received, they may never have gotten to do the wrap-up movie...
 * The Law and Order SVU episode "Harm" was rather bad with this. The detectives find that a woman may have been raped and murdered for helping refugees. They interview the widow of a man she helped, who claims her husband was murdered as well. They eventually book a doctor-slash-Torture Technician for the latter crime, but at her trial, one of the jurors faints, a mistrial is called, and the doctor's fate is left ambiguous. It appears to have been intended to make you "think" about liberty vs. security and all that jazz, were it not for two facts: first, the doctor is portrayed as an entirely negative character, and second, the plot of the initial murder is just dropped.
 * There was also another episode that left whether 1. The "victim" was raped by her teacher/date (?) or 2. She was crying wolf entirely ambiguous. Said episode ended abruptly displaying the results of a survey whose participants thought 1. The man was guilty, 2. He was innocent or 3. There "wasn't enough" evidence to make a judgment on the facts displayed.
 * The season eleven episode "Savior" did this. A young prostitute goes into premature labor and her baby is put on life support. The mother then runs away, giving power of attorney to Olivia, effectively giving Olivia the choice of whether the baby lives or dies. The episode ends with the baby needing immediate brain surgery and the doctors hammering Olivia for a decision that she never gives. This turns into a case of What Happened to the Mouse?, as neither the baby nor the mother are ever seen or heard from again.
 * "Executive Producer Dick Wolf" are often claimed to be the most frustrating words in the English language, due to the many episodes of Law and Order, and the spin offs, that end without enough resolution or sometimes any resolution at all!
 * Due to being canceled by the second season, Pushing Daisies left a lot of stuff hanging, in spite of its sweet finale. Alfredo and Oscar were Put on a Bus by the end of the first season, and no one will ever find out where is  or what the deal with   was.
 * Even worse when they release one episode of the third season and it involves Emerson's wife appearing and disappearing again with Emerson's daughter.
 * Babylon 5 inverts this problem—the carefully planned five-season format of the original show wrapped up the entire premise of the universe at the end of the series, dooming future sequels to serious Sequelitis from the very beginning, as they seem like nothing but barely related afterthoughts to a story that has already been told. A more straight example is the spinoff sequel Crusade, which was Screwed by the Network only half a season in, leaving the Drakh plague story arc unresolved.
 * According to JMS's DVD commentary, the plague plot was to have been wrapped up in the second season. As with the original, the real plot was supposed to lead out of things that seemed like minor side details in the episodes that actually aired. The endgame for the Drakh war was handled in novels set more than a decade after the events of the full run of Crusade would have been over.
 * The '90s AMC series Remember WENN ended with an unresolved cliffhanger after the network's new management abruptly canceled the show.
 * The Myth Arc of The X-Files never received a fitting conclusion.
 * The Sopranos: Hey, what ever did happen to that Russian guy in the woods?
 * Deadwood was canceled after three seasons, and had been intended to run longer. As the series was based on the real history of Deadwood in a macro sense, there was enough material and history left for at least a few more seasons. Due to the abrupt cancellation, several plotlines had to be hastily tied up, to no one's satisfaction.
 * FlashForward left just about all plotlines open due to series cancellation.
 * Foyle's War was canceled and restarted multiple times, with each cancellation resulting in an attempt to tie up the series hastily, and then put everyone together again when the series resumed. Furthermore, the first cancellation resulted in the season then in production to skip several months of time in Real Life per episode. Prior to that season, each episode had a gap of days or weeks.
 * ALF ends with the eponymous alien surrounded by government agents facing certain vivisection.
 * My Name Is Earl was canceled at the end of the fourth season... which ended on a big cliffhanger and a To Be Continued...
 * Somewhat dealt with on Raising Hope where we find out that a "A local man who made list of good things to do finally finished it." Both shows are by the same creator, Greg Garcia.
 * According to this page, the TV series version of Honey I Shrunk the Kids ended its first season revealing that the leader of the Men in Black (no, not those Men in Black) was an evil alien who had plans for the Szalinskis. It ended up getting tossed by the wayside for the rest of the series.
 * iCarly has a few plot-points unresolved or not referred to, and they revolve around the Shipping that is not the main focus for the show, and only comes up in a handful of episodes per season. There are differing ideas on what it meant, mostly around which side of the Creddie (Carly + Freddie) or Seddie (Sam + Freddie) shipping divide people stand on.
 * The first, is the end of iThink They Kissed where Carly asks Sam and Freddie (who shared a First Kiss, then hid it from Carly), how long it was, and if they enjoyed it. The episode ended before they answered the question.
 * The second, is at the end of iSpeed Date, Sam walks in on Freddie and Carly sharing a slow romantic dance in each other's arms. She walks out with saying a word. Again, it's not been brought up again, so speculation abounds on her motives and feelings for Freddie (or Carly). Again, what people think is based around the shipping divide.
 * Finally, iSaved Your Life, where Freddie saves Carly's life, they enter a relationship. Carly tries to say she loves Freddie, but Freddie still breaks up with her because Sam put it into his head that Carly just loved that he was heroic and she's just hero worshiping. Freddie says to Carly that if she wants to be his boyfriend in the future, he'd love to.
 * None of these plot-points have been mentioned again, and a deliberate Cliff Hanger which adds even more questions, in the last episode of Season 4 means it'll be at least another 3 or 4 months before any could get possibly answered.
 * An episode of Walker, Texas Ranger had Cordell Walker rescue a girl who was trapped in a Christian cult camp, but with the last minutes of the episode devoted to Walker's rescue of Alex Cahill from the cult camp, it's unknown what has happened to the girl he was supposed to rescue.
 * An even worse example is the tv movie "Trial by Fire" which ends with Alex being shot in the courthouse and lying near death. Supposedly, the producers were expecting CBS to offer them the opportunity to make further TV movies but low ratings (supposedly due to a football game preceding the movie running an hour longer than anticipated) and CBS shortly thereafter scrapping their Sunday night TV movie has made further TV movie's unlikely.
 * Probably due to extra seasons being planned but ultimately being cancelled by the BBC, season 3 of The House Of Eliott ended with an unresolved argument between Evie and Beatrice over the direction of the eponymous fashion house.
 * The final episode of Unnatural History ended with the cast in the Mongolian desert, when they hear a strange noise. Jasper and Maggie wonder what the noise was, and Henry suggests the area is "more than just dust and bones".
 * Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior. The first season ends with a sadist/masochist killer team forcing team leader Cooper into a Sadistic Choice of killing the masochist or the sadist will kill one of his teammates. The choice is right down to the wire, cut to black, gunshot. But, sorry, show was cancelled the previous week, NO RESOLUTION FOR YOU!
 * So much for The Cape. Didn't help they reduced the season's episodes from 13 to 10, and didn't even show the last episode on TV (you had to go to the website to watch it). So diehard fans will never know if the Big Bad will ever go to jail, Vince will ever clear his name, or his family will know that he is alive.
 * This Is Wonderland, a brilliant Canadian legal dramedy, ran for three seasons, and ended on three concurrent cliffhangers. What a drag.
 * In the fourth series of Merlin Guinevere and (a fake) Lancelot are Brainwashed with magic into kissing each other on the night before Gwen's wedding to Arthur, resulting in Gwen's exile and Lancelot's suicide. Although Guinevere is eventually welcomed back to Camelot by the end of the season and becomes its Queen through her marriage to Arthur, no one (including herself) ever finds out that she wasn't acting of her own volition when she cheated on Arthur, even though it would have only taken a simple conversation with Merlin (who knew that Lancelot was being controlled by Morgana) to clear up the issue (Gwen being smart enough to realize that the bracelet Lancelot gave her was probably the cause of her abrupt change in behavior). Yet for whatever reason, the writers thought exonerating the pair of them wasn't worth any meaningful resolution, and the fact that Guinevere will have to find out at some point that Lancelot killed himself isn't addressed in any way.

Video Games

 * The Metal Gear saga surprisingly avoided this problem. The fourth game filled up pretty much all plot holes, with the exception of in the second game. According to Word of God however, it was originally supposed to be played straight, with Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty being the last game chronologically in-universe; so whether or not Metal Gear counts as an example depends on whether one wants to invoke Fanon Discontinuity.
 * Final Fantasy VII has references to "Techno-Soldiers" replacing human agents of Shinra early in the game, but is never elaborated on and is forgotten once Sephiroth is introduced into the game. It is believed by many fans that the original plot of the game would have revolved around a Turned Against Their Masters scenario, which was abandoned in favor of Sephiroth.
 * The techno-soldiers themselves finally turned up in Dirge of Cerberus.
 * Early in Final Fantasy VIII, the heroes are assigned to help the city of Timber gain its independence from the Galbadian Republic. This storyline is quickly folded into the main plot, but the question of whether Timber becomes free in the end is never addressed. However, since the Timber mission was a low-paying and therefore low-importance goal, when the sorceress showed up and became a threat to Garden and the world itself, it sort of makes sense that no-one cared about that so much when the main plot kicked off.
 * Still you think the people in Timber would have cared, erm, fancy a card game.
 * Final Fantasy XII at some point completely forgets to resolve the Occuria situation. Yeah, the Sun-Cryst is destroyed, but why can't they make another? Why do they just seem to give up without any word? The sequel does not address this at all either. If the canceled sequel Fortress might have expanded on this issue is now a mystery for the ages.
 * Fortress wasn't so much as canceled as Square Enix it away from the people making it and gave it to a currently unknown group to work. The original company went bankrupt as a result and closed their doors but the project is still apparently being worked on.
 * At the very end of Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II, the player sees an ominous-looking cutscene showing the rise of a new Big Bad. This was intended to be a teaser for DA III... which was never made.
 * Dungeon Keeper III suffered the same fate. Trailer in the second game. Still waiting...
 * The Fallout series has the Followers of The Apocalypse in the first game and the very similiar tanker vagrants in the second game, both are due to bugs. Although Fallout: New Vegas does feature the former, so now we know their canon fate.
 * The Fallout3 expansion Broken Steel leaves Colonel Autumn's fate unresolved if you let him walk out of the purifier. Was he killed or captured, or did he leave the Wasteland entirely?
 * Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War ends with Brother-Captain Gabriel Angelos swearing to . Neither Gabe nor have been seen for the three expansion packs that followed; Fans are hoping that Dawn of War II will deal with this. Both a case of Left Hanging and What Happened to the Mouse?.
 * The plot line is completed as of Dawn of War II: Retribution.
 * Dreamfall, sequel to The Longest Journey, tied up about two of the many different plot threads left hanging over the course of the game. It doesn't even tell you what happened to the main characters. To be fair, though, it is the middle part of a trilogy.
 * The last installment of which will most likely never get made. It's no excuse.
 * The Interactive Fiction version of The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy ends with . The game promises a sequel, which of course never came.
 * Also book 4 of the written version which was supposed to be a final book before the author decided to write a 5th one: we get the Earth back (destroyed at the beginning of book 1) without any explanation and most of the cast is largely forgotten. Book five ties up most of the loose ends and replaces the previous resolution with a Downer Ending.
 * Gears of War 2 is paced from beginning to end by dropping the latest subplot and introducing a new one.
 * Gears of War 3, which Word of God confirms is definitely the last game in the series, does do a good job of wrapping up each characters' personal plot arcs and finally explains Imulsion and the Lambent, but still leaves unaddressed the Sires/New Hope Facility sub-plot from the second game, the true nature of the Locust (if any), as well as the question of who or what Queen Myrrah really was.
 * No More Heroes really ends with just  This leaves many things to consider, such as
 * While it was resolved in the true ending, the first "bad" ending of the game ends with  To get the real ending, you have to purchase all four beam katanas.
 * Well, No More Heroes: Desperate Struggle did give answers to a number of these questions. The UAA is a legitimate organization in the sequel. The identity of Travis's parents do not matter, because that was simply intended as a parody of Star Wars. Darkstar was just some guy who confused Travis for someone else.
 * The original Japanese release of Mother ended like this. After sending Giegue packing, Ninten and his party start to walk away from the battle field... and then the scene pauses, the credits roll, and you're left with a "To be continued..." for your troubles. The unreleased American localization averted this, adding an epilogue that gave a proper resolution for all the characters in the game; this was kept in the game when Mother 1 + 2 was released on the Game Boy Advance years later.
 * F.E.A.R. has one of your allies, Spen Jankowski, in a different area of the same operation as you. He disappears on the site. Eventually, the support guy stops mentioning him, and he never comes up again.
 * You find his body in Project Origin.
 * Persona 4 seems to be doing this deliberately; while the main plot is resolved well enough, there's a fair few details, large and small, left completely dangling.  It's quite possible that Atlus has simply left hooks in for another sequel.
 * Persona 2 At the end of Eternal Punishment, we see Maya recognize Tatsuya. . .but walk past, because she can't talk to him. We never hear about Maya again.
 * This is actually plot relevant. She can't get any closure (or the world will be screwed again like it was for the past two games), so by extension, we will never know how the rest of her life went since she obviously decided not to repeat history again, hence why we will never have another game set in the Persona2 universe that clears things up, unless she decides to attempt Screw Destiny again.
 * When Mega Man 9, and later 10, were announced, people wondered if Capcom would finally fully tie together the Classic series and the Sequel Series Mega Man X. It didn't happen. If a X9 is ever announced, people will probably ask about the Elf Wars.
 * The Viewtiful Joe games were planned to be a trilogy, with a character in the first game even outright telling the protagonist that he'd have two more fights for justice on his hands in the future. This made it all the more incredible and infuriating when come the end of the second game,  but then, OH DEAR, the studio shut down, and we never got closure on any of that, or the overall story of the games.
 * Mega Man Legends 2 ended with Mega Man Volnutt stuck on the moon, and Roll Caskett and Tron Bonne working together to rescue him. This was left to hang for an entire decade, and with the cancelation of Mega Man Legends 3, it seems it's not going to be resolved any time soon.
 * Hydrophobia ends abruptly without dealing with a lot of the plot points: the credits roll just as the heroes encounter a new danger, you never find out about the person you're trying to save, the full details of what the heck was going on is never revealed, as is info about the Big Bad and the organization behind the plot. You can get the bare bones from the various collectible documents spread about the game, but that still only gets you the lead-in to a possible reveal, which never comes.
 * The original Dead Rising left off with Frank and Isabella escaping the mall and defeating an insane military general. However, Carlito spread infected orphans all over the country and Frank himself is infected. It also isn't mentioned as to whether or not Otis escaped with the survivors successfully (and there's the fact that a few of the survivors were infected anyway). The sequel pretty much confirms that the country-wide infection has more-or-less succeeded.
 * Case West reveals that Frank and Isabella have survived, Frank is suppressing his zombification via Zombrex, and the two are hard at work to get to the bottom of the whole mess.
 * Mio's fate in the canon ending of Fatal Frame III is left deliberately ambiguous,
 * In the fourth game, the question of whether or not lived is also left unanswered.
 * The bizarre ending to Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge has never been resolved—by the time The Curse of Monkey Island came around, Ron Gilbert was no longer working on the series, and the devs for that game decided to Hand Wave it away rather than come up with their own explanation. A Word of God answer to what happened doesn't seem likely, either, as Ron Gilbert seems unwilling to share this (or the true Secret of Monkey Island—they appear to be connected) unless he can make a game out of it.
 * Return to Krondor had an ending that was clearly intended as a Sequel Hook. Let's see... A sequel has never been made.
 * Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors: Though you may not know it:
 * Touhou Project's Hisoutensoku has three story arcs centered around three heroines searching for the owner of a giant shadow/silhouette. Only Sanae's arc has sufficient closure - that she had, in fact, found her "giant." Cirno gets sidetracked twice by Marisa and ends up fighting one of Alice's experimental spell cards, pegging it as her Daidarabotchi. Meiling gets it worse:
 * Legacy of Kain has lain dormant since 2003's Defiance, with the Pillars of Nosgoth still destroyed and the future of the world uncertain. Crystal Dynamics' shift to the Tomb Raider series, the series' creator's move to Naughty Dog, and the death of Tony Jay make the chances of a resolution appear unlikely.
 * The details of Nero's background in Devil May Cry 4 remain very blurry. We still don't know whose son he is (claims that he's Vergil's remain Fanon), when or how he got his Red Right Hand, or how much Dante knows about him… and apparently we will never know since Capcom decided to let Ninja Theory make a "rebirth" of the series rather than a sequel.
 * This trope is one of the many complaints regarding Mass Effect 3's ending - no matter what you did throughout the entirety of the series, you receive one of three endings with no closure outside of the fate of the Reapers. "Side" missions such as  have no narrative consequence outside of War Assets, and the fate of your squadmates is left completely unknown.
 * The ending Killzone 3 abruptly smashes you in the face with the credits immediately after the climax. There's a short stinger scene in the middle of the credits which answers one minor question but that's as far as it goes.
 * Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich ends with meeting the living embodiment of Energy X who implies that she still has a job to do. The third game in the series, which was intended to cover modern and Iron Age comics, was never greenlit.
 * Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich ends with meeting the living embodiment of Energy X who implies that she still has a job to do. The third game in the series, which was intended to cover modern and Iron Age comics, was never greenlit.

Other

 * An old joke around this trope; a man living in an apartment building has fallen into the habit of dropping his shoes on the floor when he gets home and takes them off. This causes his downstairs neighbour to complain about the frequent noise. One evening, the man comes home, takes off one of his shoes and drops it, but then remembers his neighbour's complaint and places the other one quietly on the floor beside the first shoe. Hours later, he's going about his thing when he suddenly hears an anguished cry from downstairs:  Ba-dum-tish.

Webcomics

 * Abstract Gender died before most of the ongoing storylines (including the Myth Arc) could be ultimately resolved.
 * Pick a comic listed on Orphaned Series. Nearly all of them stopped in the middle of ongoing storylines.
 * Rumors of War frequently ends a Story Arc without resolving all of its plot threads. This is generally viewed as intentional on the part of the author. Not that it's any less frustrating to be left wondering What Happened to the Mouse?
 * In Sonichu, they had just reached big final showdown between Mary Lee Walsh, after her defeat they release the most powerful evil being in the comic, Count Graduon, and then... the creator angrily announces he hates his greedy fanbase and swears off the internet, and abandons his website.
 * As Tessa Stone hasn't been heard from in months, Hanna Is Not a Boy's Name is like this, at least for now. The comic stopped updating when every major character was in mortal peril.

Web Original

 * The X-Entertainment 2008 Advent Calendar's last update was the 22nd... right before the traditional final battle. Great.
 * Little White Lie featured a major cliffhanger...and then the creators lost their money and most of the people moved and scattered around the country.
 * The ending to Candle Cove is a mixture of this and The Reveal.  It turns into Paranoia Fuel when the participants in the story remember some profoundly scary things from the show.

Western Animation

 * As Told by Ginger: "Wicked Game" (about Dodie's attempts to break her best friend Ginger's relationship with Darren, although it is arguable whether this is in fact a Cliff Hanger).
 * Hey Arnold!:
 * "The High Life": Gerald has no money to buy rollerblades... and at the end, because of the phone line, etc., he had to sell his watches to get the money, and he still has no money to buy rollerblades.
 * "Arnold Betrays Iggy": Arnold is mad at Iggy for forcing him to wear embarrassing clothes in public and refuses to forgive him, mirroring an earlier scene where Iggy refused to forgive Arnold for exposing his secret, even though it wasn't his fault.
 * Not to mention we never do find out what happened to his parents. The episode that featured their flashback ended with Arnold finding a map and rushing to his Grandpa about it. This was actually intended to be the lead-in to a second Hey Arnold! film which would resolve this question, but Craig Bartlett's departure from the show coupled with the low gross of the first film led the series to a premature end before this could be resolved. This movie also would have resolved the cliff-hanger over how Arnold would have responded when Helga, at the end of the first film, confessed her true feelings to him. It wasn't until the movie's release in 2017, that the aforementioned plot points were finally resolved.
 * The Weekenders, "Croquembouche" (about Carver in a food essay contest: Tino does his usual end-of-episode Aesop routine while Carver presents his essay on a French cake, which gives the ep its title, and the ep ends with people applauding Carver's speech, without showing if he won or not)
 * All Grown Up!!, "Izzy or Isn't He?" (when the episode ends, you realize they never mention the result of the election that forms a major part of this episode's storyline).
 * ReBoot started the "Daemon" storyline during the third season... only to find out that they weren't getting a fourth season. That one was left hanging for years until the TV movie Daemon Rising (which used "It's About Time!" as part of the advertising). Alas, ReBoot ended on another Cliff Hanger not long after.
 * In the BattleTech animated series, the final two-part episode pits the main characters against the bad guys in a Trial of Possession for the main characters' home planet of Sommerset. When it finally breaks down to a hand to hand fight between the bad guy and the hero, it ends with the hero winning the planet... but not the people, including the hero's brother, who were all spirited off the planet. The series was not continued. However, in a novel set in the same universe, the main character shows up nearly 15 years later. He is presented with the temptation to make an unauthorized attack to retake Sommerset, meaning that the Trial of Possession (much like the rest of the series) had little or no lasting effect on the larger Battletech universe.
 * Actually, the animated series is consider non-canon. One of the books notes that there was a unpopular, short lived holovid show based off his actual career.
 * Avatar: The Last Airbender never resolves the question of what happened to.
 * Sequel Series, The Legend of Korra, features a character asking the phrase above verbatim. The addressee is cut off before she can answer. So it's STILL hanging!
 * Spider-Man Unlimited ends with Venom and Carnage-esque symbiotes being spread across the world.
 * A book on Spider-Man mentioned that had the second season happened, Spidey and the resistance would save the day. The class system on the Second Earth would be abolished and Spidey would return to his own planet. Looks like they were going to go back to basics.
 * The animated The Lord of the Rings notoriously ended halfway through with no warning. There was supposed to a second movie to wrap things up, but it never got off the ground; Return of the King was produced a few years later by Rankin and Bass, the company who made the animated version of The Hobbit.
 * Robotix ended with Nemesis, who had been presumed deceased, still alive in space. If the episodes had been picked up as a full series, he and the other Terrakors would have most likely returned to Skalorr to get revenge on the Protectons.
 * The Simpsons (animation):
 * The show has this odd tendency to start episodes with one plotline that somehow activates another, and what happened to initiate the new plotline is rarely, if ever mentioned again. A Lampshade Hanging occurred when, after the plot had shifted, a badger who had been living in the dog-house tries to reassert itself, but Homer accusingly tells it that they're onto something else now. The episode ends with the badger leading any army of badgers to invade Springfield when they're distracted by a concert by The Who.
 * Lampshaded again in a different episode, where a supermarket bagging boy strike tangentially led to the family going on an African safari. As the family drifts down a dangerous river on a very makeshift raft, Homer wonders if the strike back home is over. Then Lisa realizes they're about to careen over Victoria Falls...as Homer continues to rant on why those bag boys don't deserve crap.
 * Interestingly inverted in one episode where Homer, going crazy with Throwing Down the Gauntlet to scare everyone, ends up offending someone who accepts his challenge and he and the family are forced to flee the house while he's waiting on the lawn. At the end of the episode when they return from a failed farming venture, Homer finds his opponent still waiting for him and they end up dueling after all.
 * There was another episode with Homer on an island, where he and a girl are at the top of a tower, which is about to fall into a lava flow with them in it. The episode's plot ends there as they get interrupted by a callback to the telethon fundraiser Homer ran away from in Springfield (and a joke about Rupert Murdoch being so greedy that the show's revenue from commercials and merchandise isn't enough).
 * The first season finale of Xavier: Renegade Angel Xavier: Renegade Angel]] does this on purpose.
 * Duckman's last episode, "Four Weddings Inconceivable", ends with the titular character about to remarry—until his first wife, who has been presumed dead for the entire series, shows up. According to the series' entry at Wikipedia, "Writer Michael Markowitz noted (in Sep 1998): "We never formally planned Part II... and I'll never tell what I personally had in mind. I'm hoping to leave it to my heirs, for the inevitable day when Duckman is revived by future generations. Ah, the Spandex suits they'll wear, the hovercrafts they'll fly!"
 * The French and Vietnmese dubs of Beast Wars both ended after the second series, leaving fans with a massive, unresolved Cliff Hanger.
 * One could argue that the series itself ended up like this. While the main plotline was largely resolved, the nature of the Vok aliens (who instigated some of the series' biggest episodes) and the origins of Tarantulas were not explained. This was a result of the series being rushed to completion so that the sequel Beast Machines could begin. Simon Furman eventually revealed that the Season Three finale was originally to be a 3-parter that would end on a cliffhanger, leading in to Season Four - this Season Finale was to explain Taratulas' origins in detail and his motivations for hating the Vok (and would likely have resulted in Tigerhawk gaining a bigger role as well instead of being thrown conveniently under the bridge). The plot was rushed, and unexplained aspects of the story were left to the comic continuation.
 * Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles details in its final season the invasion of Earth. Anyone Can Die is established fairly quickly, the queen is on Earth, and the whole thing seems to be heading to a massive climax. Then Sony cut the funding three episodes from the end.
 * The ending of the second season of Legion of Super Heroes revealed that Brainiac was still alive and well ("Evil does not die; it evolves!") But the show didn't get a third season.
 * Sonic the Hedgehog: The final episode of Season 2, "The Doomsday Project" ends with Robotnik's sinister plot to launch doomsday pods all over Mobius ruined, and the city of Robotropolis can return to Mobotropolis as Dr. Robotnik is left to an unknown fate. Sonic and Sally realize their emotions for each other and kiss. But that's not it—Snively tells Sonic not to be so happy as it's now his }} chose not to renew Sonic for Season 3.
 * The Spectacular Spider-Man. Did you enjoy seeing all your favorite major and minor characters from classic Spider-Man history and can't wait to see how they develop? Want to know what kinds of juicy drama will take place now that Gwen hotted up, and is stuck with a seemingly revenge-bent Harry Osbourn? Or just how in the world his father survived that nasty explosion and what he's planning next? Does Peter end up with MJ or Gwen? Does Gwen even live? Well tough luck bub, it got shitcanned.
 * Every Spider-Man based animated series so far has been Left Hanging, in fact.
 * "Things Change", the final episode of Teen Titans, was about two things. First, it was about Beast Boy finding a Terra look-alike and trying to figure out if it was really her (which is left ambiguous). The second is about a completely unexplained conflict between the other four Titans and a random white chameleon thing. It's never explained what it is, where it came from, why it's causing trouble, or how the Titans will catch it.
 * It was later confirmed that the girl was Terra in the comic series Teen Titans Go!