Cliff Hanger: Difference between revisions

[http://rover_wow.tripod.com/tvcliff.htm This site] contains a comprehensive list of unresolved cliffhangers.

 

 

Beware of these being executed badly, too. [[What Cliffhanger]] is when a cliffhanger is so deliberately vague that it not even suspensful enough to hold a viewer's interest until the next chapter; a [[Cliffhanger Copout]] is when a creator deliberately tweaks with a story's continuity of events when resolving a cliffhanger or outright refuses to reveal a piece of information that is promised at the end of one chapter to the next. A lampshaded, immediate resolution would be [[To Be Continued Right Now]].

** Let's be perfectly honest here. Code Geass has a very, very, VERY nasty habit of leaving cliffhangers at the end of every single episode, at least in the first season. The season is basically a 25-episode cliffhanger, ending with a scene that quite often leaves viewers screaming at the top of their lungs at their screens.

** They also had a bad habit of the next episode beginning after the cliffhanger is resolved, and then drawing it out until a flashback shows how it actually ended.

* Parodied in the first episode of ''[[Pretty Sammy|Magical Project S]]'', which ends with the then-faceless Pixy Misa saying "you'll have to wait until next week to see who I am".

* When ''[[D.N.Angel]]'' was put on a hiatus by its writer, fans were left hanging for two years in which [[Redheaded Hero|Daisuke]] was setting off to find his kidnapped love interest's twin sister, and gets offered by his morally questionable rival for help. Fans were left waiting for ''two years'' until the manga was started up again and the arc was resolved.

* In ''[[True Tears]]'', one of the driving factors for following the story asides the depth of the characters and the compelling love story are the constant cliff hangers on the end of each episode. Several of these tend to shake up things quite a bit.

* [[Naruto]] is pretty infamous for this. A recent chapter even ended ''mid-sentence'' during such.

* ''[[Hayate the Combat Butler (Manga)|Hayate the Combat Butler]]'' manga started out the current arc with one, and still hasn't resolved it. Leaving the fans to try and figure out how the pieces are going to connect. Doesn't help that the last arc gave us the starting of it, but leaving things vague enough for us to not realize that it was going to be left as a cliffhanger.

* Zig-zagged in the anime adaptation of ''[[Berserk]]''. The very first scene of the anime takes place {{spoiler|[[Foregone Conclusion|a few weeks after the events of the Eclipse with Guts waiting for Godo to prepare the Dragonslayer]].}} After the opening credits, the scene flashes two years later when {{spoiler|Guts has a well-established reputation as the Black Swordsman.}} After defeating an apostle, the rest of the series reveals [[How We Got Here|how Guts became the way he is in the present]], starting with his first encounter with soon-to-be [[Big Bad]] Griffith. In the last episode, during the climax of the Eclipse, we see Guts screaming in rage and agony {{spoiler|at the sight of the demon lord Femto raping Casca}} just as the credits role in. Although the very last scene reverts back to the very first scene, it is still left unclear as to {{spoiler|how Guts managed to make it back from the hell dimension alive or whether Casca survived her ordeal}} and the viewers are still [[Left Hanging]] on this detail as Guts walks into the distance as the Black Swordsman, which is where the anime ends.

* Used very very frequently in ''[[Brigadoon Marin and Melan]]''. Especially in the second half of the series, more episodes end with cliffhangers than not.

* The [[Pokémon Special]] FireRed and LeafGreen chapter ends with one of these.

 

== [[Film]] ==

* The endings of the first two ''[[Back to The Future]]'' movies (each ending with a "To Be Continued..." at the end.) Note that the original theatrical run of ''[[Back to The Future]]'' did not have "To Be Continued..." at the end; it was only added later for VHS and TV prints when the first film became so popular, that they decided to do the sequels.

* The second ''[[Pirates of the Caribbean]]'' film (Jack gets captured/killed and everyone gets ready to go rescue him).

* [[Bruce Coville (Creator)|Bruce Coville]]'s ''[[The Unicorn Chronicles|Song of the Wanderer]]'' ends with the big bad getting the key that will allow her to destroy Luster, cue huge build up and a to be continued. The sequel about the epic war is then put on hiatus and not published until nearly 10 years later.

* The ''Tennis Shoe Adventure'' books start being cliffhangers after book 2, and they haven't stopped. Last time we checked, the fate of every. Single. Character. Was hanging in the hands of a cocky 19-year-old and time was running out. And this was in...what, 2006?

* [[Sammy Keyes|Wendelin Van Draanen]] ''loves'' ending every single one of her chapters with a cliffhanger. (Thankfully, they're always resolved with a turn of the page. Face it, as annoying as this can get, you can't say as much for the cliffhangers of [[The Devouring|other]] [[Artemis Fowl (Literature)|authors.]])

* ''[[Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire]]'' ended with Harry finishing his fourth year at Hogwarts. Oh, and the little incidental fact that {{spoiler|Voldemort had returned}}, meaning that everything was about to change for the heroes and the world in which they lived. Naturally, the fandom exploded with theories, [[Wild Mass Guessing]], and more [[Fanfic]] than anyone could reasonably hope to read. The next book, ''[[Order of the Phoenix]]'', wasn't published until three years later, prompting many fans to dub the interval "the three-year summer."

 

== [[Live Action TV]] ==

** The modern series, which has multi-parters as a more occasional thing, makes it slightly easier to list.

*** "Bad Wolf" ends with the revelation that for the past century Earth has been controlled by the Daleks, and the Doctor promising he'll come rescue Rose from their clutches.

* Peril 'hanger: At the end of ''[[Angel (TV)|Angel]]'' Season Three, Angel is put in a box and sunk to the bottom of the ocean and Cordelia [[Ascend to A Higher Plane of Existence|becomes a higher being and disappears]]. Huge cliffhanger.

* Every single ''[[Farscape (TV)|Farscape]]'' season ending.

** Four months? It was a year in the UK. Frustration ensued, especially as UK viewers are less habituated to cliffhangers...

* ''[[The Adventures of Brisco County Jr]]'' made regular use of cliffhangers. The early episodes had two cliffhangers (one for each act break). Later episodes had one.

* ''[[Mission Impossible]]'' used this ''constantly'' in [[Act Break|Act Breaks]] (and, of course, in ''its'' two-part stories - the show's only three-parter, "The Falcon," even ended part one with Paris dangling over a cl... balcony!).

** ''The Next Generation'', ''Voyager'' and ''Enterprise'' always achieved their cliffhangers by splitting a two-part episode over the end of one season and the start of the next. ''Deep Space Nine'' had a rather more interesting approach however, in which the final episode of the season would have its own storyline wrapped up within the episode itself, but the next stage of the show's story arc was set up in the process.

* ''[[Twenty Four|24]]'' typically uses a cliffhanger at the end of each ''episode''. The show also featured a season-ending cliffhanger in the final seconds of season 2, which, irritatingly enough, was subverted when the third season picked up three years later and the cliffhanger had already been resolved. This was later revisited in The Game, but it's annoying how the Season 2 and 7 plot arcs aren't fully explored at the end.

** Actually, the first episode of every season finale ends on a cliffhanger that is resolved by the following one. Usually in an [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|awesome]] way.

* ''[[ER]]'' does this pretty much every season.

* An early British example was the TV spy series ''Callan'', whose second season ended with an episode where Callan was kidnapped and brainwashed into believing that Hunter, the head of his section, was an enemy agent. Callan kills Hunter and is himself shot; the episode and season ended with him mortally wounded and gasping to Meres, a fellow agent, "Toby, old man... I've been had!" The next season dealt with Callan's recovery and return to operations while being treated with ''extreme'' caution by his superiors.

* ''[[Friends]]'' ended almost all of it seasons with a cliffhanger, the most famous one being the season 4 finale, where Ross says the wrong name at his wedding.

** The first season ends {{spoiler|only moments after Commander Adama has been shot twice is the chest, right after initiating a military coup and arresting the President.}}

* A short lived '70s series called ''Cliffhangers'' was a homage to the old movie cliffhanger serials. The show had 3 different segments each hour, with each ending on a [[Cliff Hanger]] each week! (And just to rub it in, only one segment reached a proper conclusion before the series was cancelled!)

** Also spoofed by the show on a number of occasions. At the end of one Holloween episode, the last few seconds reveal a surprise ending where Mr. Burns' head has been grafted unto Homer's body. The episode ends with a (fake) cliffhanger and a teaser for next week's episode, where Homer is denied a free spaghetti dinner because Mr. Burns has plans to meet with the queen of Holland that night. Of course, it's all a spoof and the next ''real'' episode has everything back to normal.

* ''[[Beast Wars (Animation)|Beast Wars]]'' tended to pull out the stops at the end of a season. According to the writers, they were never sure if there was going to be another season, so they wanted each cliffhanger to possibly be the end of ''[[The End of the World As We Know It|everything]]''.

* ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (Animation)|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'' does this with the two-parters at the start of seasons 1 and 2, both of which involve a [[Big Bad|supervillain]] escaping confinement and needing to be put down with the Elements of Harmony. Both endings are also directed in a similar way, [http://bronies.memebase.com/2011/09/22/my-little-pony-friendship-is-magic-brony-went-crazy-after-both/ which did not go unnoticed].

** Season 1's first episode ends with the return of [[Mad God|Nightmare Moon]]. The only forces capable of putting a stop to [[The Night That Never Ends|her plan]] are either inactive or nowhere to be seen. Resolved in part 2 when the Elements of Harmony are reactivated and used to [[Stealth Pun|save the day]].

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* ''[[Wing Commander (Video Game)|Wing Commander]] II'' ended with [[The Dragon|Prince Thrakhath]] bragging to the [[Mega Neko|Kilrathi]] Emperor about the utter destruction of the Confederation's 6th fleet in Deneb Sector, with the last words on the screen being "To be continued in [[Wing Commander (Video Game)|Wing Commander]] III".

* ''[[Dino Crisis]] 2'' ended with a cliffhanger, then the third game took off on a totally different tangent, [[Recycled in Space]], and flopped hard, [[Franchise Killer|putting the nail in the coffin]].

[[Category:Ending Tropes]]

[[Category:Cliff Hanger]]