No Ending: Difference between revisions

== Comic Books ==

* The [[Novelization]] of ''[[Knightfall]]''. Alfred is gone and Bruce hasn't decided whether to resume being Batman. The final lines of the book are potent.

"Damned if I know," Bruce said. }}

* Often a case in comic books, especially when a comic ends abruptly. Occasionally the plotline will be picked up again in another book or resolved if a series is brought back into publication. Trade paperbacks are also infamous for this sometimes, as far as leaving storylines unresolved or ending in the middle. Famous examples would be:

* The Mary Tyler Moore movie ''A Change of Habit'' famously ends this way, with MTM trying to decide whether she will remain a nun or leave the order to pursue True Love with [[Elvis Presley]].

* ''[[Woody Allen|Melinda and Melinda]]''. The serious story has no ending. The [[Framing Device]] ends the film justly:

* ''[[Master and Commander]]'' is arguably this. Throughout the film, the ''Surprise'' is chasing the ''Acheron''. At the end, after the Acheron is captured in battle, the ships are repaired, and Aubrey sends the Acheron ahead to Valparaiso while the Surprise stays in the Galapagos, Aubrey finds out that the doctor of the Acheron who had told Aubrey that the ship's captain was dead was himself the captain. So Aubrey had essentially repaired the captain's ship for him and given him a head start, and the movie ends almost exactly where it began.

* ''[[American Psycho]]''. The ending throws into question everything we saw happen in the film and we never get an answer as to what really happened.

* ''[[Starship Troopers]]'' (the novel, not the movie) ends with Rico successfully completing his second crack at Officer Candidate School and taking command of the Roughnecks. What happens from there, including the outcome of the war, is left entirely up to the reader.

** The reason is because it's a [[Coming of Age Story]]. At the end the protagonist, although still in his 20s, has come of age, and replaced (one of) his father figures. And the war is clearly going well, since they're about to have their second go at taking the enemy's homeworld.

** A popular [[Wild Mass Guessing|theory]] is that the book ends here because Rico died in his final drop.

* ''[[Special Topics in Calamity Physics]]'' plays with this: the book ends with a "multiple choice exam", the answers to which suggest a few ways to tie up the loose ends.

** [[Monty Python]] was notorious for not ending their sketches or shows. Most of the time, the characters would simply walk off, or the Colonel character would show up and disrupt things, or the sketch would be invaded by another sketch, or things would simply trail off inconclusively as the characters just sort of

*** [[Lampshaded]] in the Abuse/Cannibalism sketch:

*** [[Spike Milligan]]'s sketch shows often did the same thing. Often the characters would just pause in mid-action and then all sidle offstage chanting "What are we gonna do now? What are we gonna do now?"

* Rather than ending with the hospital closing and everyone moving away/getting new jobs/getting married, [[ER]] simply ended much in the way it began. A hectic day at work, first day on the job for a new doctor, and a mass trauma coming in and everyone rolling up their sleeves and getting to work.

 

* Episodes of ''[[The Goon Show]]'' almost never had real endings, but sometimes they made it completely obvious, such as:

** They did end some episodes, but that was mainly through careful application of [[Drop the Cow|rapidly descending livestock]].

** The last regular episode ended with a brief announcement: "That was it - the last of them." The 1972 reunion show "The Last Goon Show of All" ended just as inconclusively as a regular episode.

** [[Sequel Hook]]!

** According to a [[Game FAQs]], [[Ubisoft]] intentionally planned Assassin's Creed as a 3-part series (with a bunch of portable system companion games and downloadable bonus levels), with each part taking place in a different era and involving a different ancestor of Desmond Miles. This is supported by the fact that AC2 {{spoiler|1=picks up immediately where AC1 left off, with Lucy Stillman leading you out of Abstergo and to the hideout where the Animus 2.0 is.}}

** It was/is usually a form of euphemism; and if you don't believe me, you can go [[Curse Cut Short|fu]][NO CARRIER]

* The story of the [[Time Management Game]] ''[http://www.playfirst.com/game/fix-it-up-kates-adventure Fix-it-up: Kate's Adventure]'' fits, according to [http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2009/05/column_homer_in_silicon_narrat_1.php one review].

* ''H! Flash''. 51 chapters, the last few of which definitely feel like they're leading to some closure, and ''[http://www.improfanfic.com/h/segs/hf051.txt this]'' is how it ends? With a [[Giant Space Flea From Nowhere|piece of fluff from nowhere?]] What about all of the plot threads? What about Yummi-chan and her weird agenda? [[They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot]]...

** Improfanfic is notorious for this, due to various factors. (This troper was a prolific and active member of the IFF community from 1999 to 2002.) Among the things that can kill an Impro dead:

- The admin for a given story just stops caring, doesn't prod writers, doesn't run queue signups, and probably leaves IFF entirely.|The story is in "ending mode" with a fixed final queue, and the last author never bothers writing the last chapter. (This most famously happened to m.t.c.f.f. ULTRA, the original flagship of IFF, which ''still'' has not been ended a decade later, and '''still''' lists ''an author who abandoned writing the finale'' as the final author.)}}

(To be fair, there are a LOT of reasons this happens--people graduate college and get jobs, people get tired of the hobby, people leave the IFF community over something or other, etc. It isn't just a [[They Just Didn't Care]], because these are real human beings with real lives and IFF is very much a hobby.)

*** That only works if you consider the comics as canon, which many people do not.

* The ''[[Veggie Tales]]'' song "The Song of the Cebu" ends this way, to much annoyance on the part of Archibald and the audience in general.

''Bye-bye moo moo, Bye-bye moo moo, Bye-bye moo moo, moo moo.'' }}

** The ''[[Veggie Tales]]'''s retelling of the story of Jonah ends extremely abruptly, with Jonah in the middle of a hissy fit after God has rebuked him for wishing death on the repentant city of Nineveh. This follows the original Biblical account, where the story ended equally abruptly.

* The ''[[Beavis and Butthead]]'' episode "Cow Tipping" was about Beavis and Butt-head going cow tipping and it results with Butt-head pushing over a cow that crushes Beavis. Just then the scary farmer appears and calls the cow as good as dead and gets his chainsaw. Beavis tells the farmer to kill the cow and not him...it fades to black and all we hear is Beavis scream, the chainsaw running and the farmer laughing. While this episode is accepted by fans as non-canon (due to it being implied that the farmer kills Beavis), one would think given the series' past with censorship issues, this episode had that problem. That's not true though. The ending to this episode was not so violent or gory it had to be censored...the ending it has is just how it ends!

* The ''[[South Park]]'' episode "Fatbeard" was about Cartman going to Somalia to become a pirate and it results with [[Determinator|Kyle]], [[What the Hell, Hero?|who previously encouraged Cartman to go]], coming after him because Ike went with Cartman, [[Laser-Guided Karma|only to be held captive by the fat pirate leader against his will.]] Just then, a U.S. ship comes and shoots all the Somalian pirates... and then the show goes straight to the ending credits.

* ''[[Invader Zim]]'' did this with every episode, sometimes finishing in a condition that would keep the story from progressing, yet at the start of the next episode it was as if nothing happened.

** [[Fridge Brilliance|Because]] [[Negative Continuity|nothing had]].

 

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'''[[Statler and Waldorf|Waldorf]]:''' Because it still wouldn't make this page any better.<br />

'''[[Statler and Waldorf|Both]]:''' Doh-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho!