Cliff Hanger

To be resolved...in two weeks! (because I am an evil motherfucker)

—Shortpacked

A Cliff Hanger ends an Act Break, episode, or even a whole season (or a film or novel in a series) with some or all of the main characters in peril of some kind and the audience is made to wait for the outcome. The To Be Continued caption is often used here. Typically the longer the viewer is made to wait, the larger the seeming peril. Indeed, this can be a Downer Ending to the part just finished—although many apparent perils and catastrophes are not as serious as they appear. It is a rare Cliff Hanger that will cut back simply to watch 'em fall.

A Cliff Hanger can also be centered around surprising revelations; either one just made, or one being saved for the 'hanger's resolution.

Named for the old Saturday matinée film serials which would frequently leave a character literally hanging from the side of a cliff, revealing how the character escaped in the next episode.

The season type of 'hanger has a flaw: if the show gets canceled, the 'hanger stays unresolved. A few such 'hangers are listed below. This is not to be confused with a Bolivian Army Ending, which is an intentionally unresolved cliffhanger as an ending. If this happens, the cliffhanger may be resolved in a movie or miniseries later on. Or, it may not... and that's why we have Fan Fiction.

Stories need not end with just one cliffhanger; there can be one for every independent plot thread if the writers think the audience will stand for it.

Myth Arc, Mind Screw, and Jigsaw Puzzle Plot series all use cliffhangers as often as possible, some of them with every episode.

This site contains a comprehensive list of unresolved cliffhangers.

Not to be confused with an area for aircraft set into a mountainside (a cliff hangar), the sort used to hang up clothing (a coat hanger), the laserdisc-based video game using footage from Lupin III, the pricing game Cliff Hangers on The Price Is Right (AKA The Yodely Guy game), the movie of the same name (you might be able to find that here) either of the two comic strips also using the name, or the Cliffhangers TV series.

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.

Resolved Cliffhangers

Anime and Manga

Even Anime has done season-ending 'hangers, with The Big O and Zoids Fuzors, not to mention a cliffhanger of truly staggering size at the end of Season 1 of Code Geass (mentioned in detail below).
The anime Code Geass ends its first season on a particularly high Cliff Hanger: the rebellion is collapsing, the entire school is being held hostage by a student with a bomb, the Anti-Hero's identity is revealed to his now bloodthirsty former best friend, and the situation devolves into a rage-filled Mexican Standoff... just to fade to black in time for a single gunshot.
- 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.
- And then comes the second season, where Every. Damn. Episode. Ends with a cliffhanger of cosmic proportions and every second one is a Wham! Episode, to boot.
Parodied in the first episode of 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 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.
- After completing the aforementioned arc and even getting through another one, D.N.Angel is once again put on an at least six month hiatus with the completion of Part 1...with the massive cliffhanger of Riku finally seeing Daisuke (and Satoshi) transform, and asking if he's Daisuke...or Dark. And that's not even covering the stuff that still needs to be answered after that single chapter.
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.
Bakuman｡ is pretty much a cliffhanger in every chapter. Especially when the characters are up for serialization.
The Transformers Cybertron episode "Search" ended with Overhaul dangling from a cliff above a valley of lava.
Bleach often ends with cliffhangers, especially when one character launches an attack against another. More often than not, the attack is non-fatal (and often, completely ineffective), and the next chapter shows why.
Several episodes of Death Note, particularly the second-to-last one when Light has Mikami write all his enemies' names in the Death Note, end in cliffhangers.
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 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 Guts has a well-established reputation as the Black Swordsman. After defeating an apostle, the rest of the series reveals 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 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 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.
- The timeline and detail of events in the manga is much more straight forward since the absence of the Skull Knight from the animation was partially responsible so we know what happens after the climax of the Eclipse and the story continues from there.
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.
Every chapter has a Cliff Hanger in Bitter Virgin. The readers are even left hanging on the last chapter to how the relationship will end up.
The Giant Robo OVA ended on a great, gaping "To Be Continued". While the main conflict is resolved, it's implied that Big Fire still had a few more tricks up their sleeves.
Episodes 5 and 10 of Popotan: the former ends with Mai and Mea being left behind when their house jumps forward in time five years, the latter with Keith incapacitating Mea and making the house travel to its final destination.

Comic Books

Chapters 3, 4 and 5 of All Fall Down end this way.
- In Chapter 3, Siphon is placed under arrest for the super-manslaughter of 642 people.
- In Chapter 4, the last thing we see is Portia stepping off a high-rise roof, followed by a Black Screen of Death.
- In Chapter 5, we see Pronto, Brainwashed and Crazy, about to be unleashed on his unsuspecting friends.

Film

Film does this too, especially when doing the "two films at once" thing. Star Wars seems to have started the trend with the ending of The Empire Strikes Back, with Han Solo being captured, frozen in carbonite and being taken to Jabba the Hutt so he could be rescued at the beginning of Return of the Jedi.
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).
The Italian Job is worth mentioning - although the ending is technically of the Bolivian Army variety, it's also a Literal Cliff Hanger involving an entire bus.

Charlie: Hang on lads, I've got a great idea...

Film serials of the 1930's and 40's used this technique to bring audiences back each week to see how the heroes would get out of whatever tense situation they were last seen in. This was used to great effect in the The Adventures of Captain Marvel serial, despite the protagonist being Nigh Invulnerable to most forms of attack. Not only did they occasionally place Captain Marvel in situations where even his invulnerability might not protect him (including one infamous death trap involving molten lava), his mortal alter ego of Billy Batson was often placed in dangerous situations, making the audience wonder if he'd be able to escape or say his magic word in time.

Literature

Older Than Print meta-example: The cliffhanger was part of Scheherazade's desperate gambit to keep herself from being executed in Arabian Nights, as she told the evil king a series of stories for one thousand and one nights, ending each night on a cliffhanger so very enticing that he could not execute her, because then he would not get to hear the ending.
One must really feel sorry for those who read the Alex Rider novel Scorpia before Ark Angel came out. The novel ends with Alex being shot in the chest and him seeing his dead parents which gives the assumption that the bullet killed him. Even though he was proved to have survived with the release of Ark Angel, some fans still think that he was killed in Scorpia and have varying theories about the later books.
Demonglass ends with Abby Thorne being burnt to the ground while under attack from the Eye with Archer and Sophie's Dad still trapped inside Cal running in to try and find them, Sophie's powers blocked, Jenna missing, possibly dead and Sophie being told that she could find her mother with supposed evil prodigium hunter Aislinn Brannick. Also Demonfied Nick is loose and killed nearly 20 people in one night, Demonfied Daisy was also released, we still do not know what happened to Chaston, Anna, or the other missng students, half the Council was killed and the good guys were actually the bad guys, so the bad guys might be the good guys, but were not sure yet.
Edgar Rice Burroughs's The Gods of Mars ended with Dejah Thoris, Thuvia, and Phaidor all trapped in the Temple of the Sun for a year—and with Phaidor trying to stab Dejah Thoris. John Carter has to live out that year in ignorance.
Lloyd Alexander's The Remarkable Journey of Prince Jen ends every chapter except the side stories and the finale with one of these, along with an italicized paragraph directly addressing the reader and asking questions in the vein of "What will happen next?"
Lampshaded in The Pendragon Adventure by the titular character. Since most of the series takes place as a series of his journals, which he frequently writes before falling asleep, he has once written about an impending catastrophe... only to apologize in the next journal, saying he couldn't stay awake to continue.
Bruce Coville's 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?
The ending to the second Hunger Games book (Catching Fire) caused major fan freak-outs.
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 other authors.)
Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire ended with Harry finishing his fourth year at Hogwarts. Oh, and the little incidental fact that 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."
- Order of the Phoenix, Half Blood Prince, and, to a lesser extent, Prisoner of Azkaban end on cliffhangers as well. The first book also has a minor Sequel Hook with Dumbledore's mention that there are still other ways Voldemort could return, although that thread doesn't pay off until the fourth book. Goblet Of Fire, however, goes so far as to title its final chapter "The Beginning".
- Also, in Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone, if you were reading one chapter at a time, you were definitely on the edge of your seat with the words at the end of Through the Trapdoor: " But it wasn't Snape. It wasn't even Voldemort."
- Severus Snape: friend or foe?
Six Sacred Stones takes the concept of a cliff hanger one epic step further. The novel ends with Jack West falling into an abyss, without his maghook.
Every chapter of every Goosebumps book ends in this manner, which leads the reader to wonder what happens next, ESPECIALLY at the end of the book.
The Princess Bride (novel) ends with a Bolivian Army Ending, with everyone separated, stuck, and surrounded by enemies. We get Cop Out in the preview for the sequel, where somehow the crew of Dread Pirate Robert's ship comes in at the last moment and saves them. Also, Goldman writes about how Morgenstern (the "original" author) had a monetary stake in trees at the time, so to get people to care more about trees, he decided to spend 95% of the chapter talking about how great trees are, with details of their rescue sparsely peppered in, so you'd need to read about the trees just to read the cop out.
A Song of Ice and Fire: at the end of every book and most of the chapters.
The Dresden Files: Changes ends with Harry shot dead, yet the series is obviously not concluded.
A Certain Magical Index: Any volume that's part of a multi-volume arc and isn't the finale. The biggest example is undoubtedly New Testament Volume 8, where Othinus gains her full power as a Magic God and destroys the entire universe. The next volume revolves around Touma (the sole survivor, due to being immune to magic) having to fight her singlehandedly.

Live Action TV

Doctor Who for most of its history consisted entirely of multi-episode serials, so obviously it's had a lot of cliffhangers. There have even been a couple of Literal Cliff Hangers.
- 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.
  - "Army of Ghosts" ends five million Cybermen arriving on Earth and seizing control, and the Void Sphere opening to reveal four Daleks.
  - "Utopia" finishes with the reveal that Professor Yana is actually the Master, as he steals the TARDIS, leaving the Doctor, Martha and Captain Jack about to be killed by zombie-esque hoards. The episode right after that, "The Sound of Drums" finishes with The Master aging and capturing the Doctor, imprisoning Jack, and Martha just escaping to witness the death of 10% of the Earth.
  - "Silence in the Library" ends with Donna disappearing mid-teleport with a scream, as the Doctor and River are cornered.
  - "Turn Left" finishes with Donna saving the day, and destroying an alternate universe where the Doctor died prematurely....but then tells him about the strange blond woman who said the words "Bad Wolf". At that moment, the old Arc Words from season one appear everywhere, and the cloister bell starts ringing.
    - The episode right after that ends with Daleks raging across the Earth, Sarah Jane being cornered by Daleks in her car, the members of Torchwood under attack, and the Doctor mid-regeneration.
  - "Flesh and Stone" ends with the Doctor about to execute a plan to escape the Weeping Angels.
  - "The Pandorica Opens" finishes with Rory being mind-controlled and shooting Amy, the Doctor being locked inside an inescapable prison by all of his enemies, and the TARDIS blowing up with River inside it, destroying the entire universe.
  - The end of "The Impossible Astronaut" is Amy shooting the astronaut which killed the Doctor, only to reveal it to actually be a little girl. The next episode also has a cliffhanger, but one that isn't concluded for several more episodes, as it shows the same little girl regenerating in a back-alley.
Lost regularly milks cliffhangers of both types for all they're worth, and Heroes is jumping in with both feet too.
Also a staple of J.J. Abrams' other serial Alias, as as acknowledged nod to The Perils of Pauline. Almost to the point of annoyance.
Peril 'hanger: At the end of Angel Season Three, Angel is put in a box and sunk to the bottom of the ocean and Cordelia becomes a higher being and disappears. Huge cliffhanger.
Every single Farscape season ending.
Season two of Lois and Clark ended with Clark having just proposed to Lois. This cliffhanger lasted for four months, eventually to be resolved with the Wham! Line, "Who's asking? Clark or Superman?"
- Four months? It was a year in the UK. Frustration ensued, especially as UK viewers are less habituated to cliffhangers...
  - Say the people who invented Doctor Who
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 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 first season of Stargate Atlantis ended with the city of Atlantis on the verge of another wraith attack, Ford captured by the wraith, Colonel Everett surrounded by them, and Major Sheppard flying a booby-trapped puddle jumper on a suicide mission towards a Wraith Hive-ship.
- The second season ended with several Wraith hive ships headed towards Earth.
- The third season ended with the city stuck in the middle of empty space with limited air and a failed hyperdrive. Even if Jewel Staite was entering the show as Kaylee rather than Doctor Keller, it's a bit tricky to imagine them fixing it.
- Season four ended with the slightly less impressive cliffhanger of an building collapsing on the team.
Likewise, parent show Stargate SG-1 ended almost all of its seasons with cliffhangers of varying magnitude, all with the ominous "To Be Continued..." caption.
Dallas relied on a season ending Cliff Hanger every year. The most famous was "Who Shot JR?" in 1980, which lasted from March 21 to November 7.
Star Trek has had a Cliff Hanger in nearly every non-final season since Star Trek: The Next Generation's Season Three. It's no coincidence that that cliffhanger, "The Best of Both Worlds", is considered to be the best episode of the entire series (and good arguments are made that it's the best episode of the entire franchise. Edith Keeler might disagree, though...)
- This one is particularly interesting in that it cleared the way for cliffhangers, previously a staple for soap operas, to be used in more "serious" TV shows.
- At the time, this cliffhanger had particular punch because it was unknown whether Patrick Stewart would return for future seasons; the writers left the second half open for this reason.
- 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.
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.
The beginning of the new Doctor Who episode "The Impossible Planet" has a Shout-Out to the Cliff Hangers of the old series. In The Teaser, the Ood, who look like Lovecraftian horrors, walk toward the Doctor and Rose chanting "We must feed", and the close-ups and spinning camera angles match the old Who's Cliff Hangers perfectly. Naturally, after the titles, the Ood are shown to be perfectly nice and friendly, with their apparent viciousness being a Phlebotinum Breakdown: "We must feed..."—whacks the translation orb -- "...you, if you are hungry. Do you want refreshments?"
- Actually, the first episode of every season finale ends on a cliffhanger that is resolved by the following one. Usually in an awesome way.
ER does this pretty much every season.
CSI ended its seventh season with Sara Sidle stuck in the middle of the desert (during a rainstorm) and trapped under a car. This was because the Serial Killer had put her there.
- Its eighth ended with Warrick Brown apparently shot dead by the Undersheriff. He was actually shot dead
Season 3 of Babylon 5 ends not only on a cliffhanger, but a cliffjumper as the main character flings himself into a bottomless chasm.
Season 3 of The Sentinel ended with one of the main characters having been drowned in a fountain by an evil female Sentinel and a To Be Continued... at which point the show was cancelled. Fan outrage helped get it Uncancelled for a half-season, long enough to resolve the storyline and come up with a less depressing finale.
Season one of Supernatural had John being possessed and Dean being tortured, then Sam trying to get them both to the hospital, saying that everything will be fine...and then a giant truck totals the Impala, leaving all three men bloody and unconscious.
- This was nothing compared to season three, where Dean dies and the last shot is of him in Hell.
- And then the last episode of season four, which had Sam killing Lilith, and learning too late that she was the final seal that was keeping Lucifer from entering the mortal realm.
- Season six.

Castiel:I'm your new God. And you will bow down, and profess your love unto me, your Lord. Or I shall destroy you.
end

EVERY season finale of One Tree Hill.
Third Watch had Cliff Hangers after its third, fourth and fifth seasons - the latter two both involving Bosco, Faith, Cruz, and a shooting.
Even sitcoms aren't immune - most of Frasier's season finales ended on a cliffhanger - the biggest one being the end of Season 7, where Niles and Daphne finally got together.
- Even the Grand Finale ended on a minor cliffhanger. The only seasons not to end with one were 1, 2, 3 and 6.
Smallville. Every single season of Smallville.
The first and fourth seasons of The West Wing end on extremely tense cliffhangers.
- The second season doesn't, if you've been paying any sort of attention, but many viewers apparently missed the cues.
  - The funny thing about the second season finale is that it does have a cliffhanger, for the more minor plot of the coup in Haiti. The President's reelection, however, is a much larger arc and takes up much of the focus, so the Subversion there is unexpected.
"You aint my muvva!" "Yes I am!!" Dun Dun dundundundun...
In an unusual move, the second season of the light-hearted Big Wolf on Campus ended with one of the main characters a stone statue after making a Heroic Sacrifice for his best friend. All the more dramatic because the show nearly didn't come back for a third season, but fortunately it was renewed and he was saved.
- An intentional (I think) cliffhanger, or at least the show wasn't unexpectedly cancelled.
The third season of Desperate Housewives concluded with Edie Britt's apparent suicide after Carlos dumped her. The fourth season premiere revealed that she had actually faked her suicide in order to win Carlos back.
JAG had several cliffhangers. The first season ended with Harm being arrested for murder, though same episode was a Missing Episode and later adapted, thus bordering on Canon Discontinuity. The third season ended with Harm and Mac about to be shot down in a Russian jet while looking for Harm's father. The sixth ended with Harm lost at sea, having ejected from his F-14 trying to get back in time to catch Mac's wedding. The seventh ends with Bud stepping on a landmine while trying to prevent an Afghan boy from doing likewise. The eighth ended with Harm leaving JAG to save Mac and Webb against orders. The ninth ends with Webb apparently killed and the Admiral's retirement. The series itself ends with something like a cliffhanger, leaving the audience wondering if either Harm or Mac will retire after they decide to marry and whether they'll end up in London or San Diego afterwards.
Grey's Anatomy's fifth season ended with a cliffhanger. Either Izzie or George might be headed for the big OR in the sky. Or both.
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.
Season 2 of the new Battlestar Galactica ends, after having skipped a year, with a Cylon fleet appearing over New Caprica, the Battlestars and remnants of the civilian fleet jumping away, and President Baltar surrendering. The first episode of Season 3 skips ahead four and a half months, when the Cylon occupation is in full swing. By the fourth episode of the season, the Cylons have been kicked out and the search for Earth resumes.
- The first season ends 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!)
Used constantly on The X-Files. Three really annoying words: "To Be Continued..."
Already taunting fans with severe British Brevity (i.e. the prospect of waiting a whole year for another six episodes), Misfits ended its first season on a horrible cliff-hanger: the main character was left buried alive, with no obvious means of escape.
Vintergatan had a cliffhanger Once an Episode, with no sign of stopping. Fortunately, the cliffhangers don't bother people that much. Why? Because it's always been presented that way, and there's danger around every corner in-canon, so it doesn't seem forced (and even when it does, it rarely becomes Narm—usually it's Narm Charm, and at worst, it's So Bad It's Good) -- and second, because that meant we got to hear the cliffhanger jingle. DAH, DADAH-DAH DAAAAAAH!
Power Rangers Turbo ended with the mentors all captured or MIA, all powers and ranger tech broken or destroyed, and four of the remaining five rangers taking a space shuttle out to try and do something, lack of superpowers, FTL drive, and location of enemies be damned. The series actually ended on a "to be continued" just as the shuttle took off.
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers got in a really good one at the end of "Green With Evil Part 2". The episode ended with Goldar's sword apparently about to impale Jason's head.
- Let's not forget Season 3's infamous cliffhanger with the villains' blowing up the Command Center, and leaving the Rangers pretty much screwed.^[1]
A few season finales of 7th Heaven have ended on cliffhangers, with the 7th season being the worst offender. Is Lucy pregnant? What happened that brought head of the church and the police force to the Camdens' front door to talk to Eric immediately? Who did Mary elope with? Did Roxanne and Chandler get married? Of course, it was all resolved next season. Lucy wasn't pregnant, Simon got into a car accident that resulted in a young boy's death, Mary eloped with Carlos, and Roxanne and Chandler break up. Although we never did find out what happened to Christine or why Cecilia disappeared in early season 9…
NCIS has six season cliffhangers:
- Season 2 Kate shot and killed.
- Season 4 Tony meeting his girlfriend's father, La Grenouille.
- Season 5 Jenny's death and Vance separating the team.
- Season 6 Ziva held captive by terrorists
- Season 7 Paloma Alejandro and her gang walking into Jackson's office.
- Season 9 Harper Dearing planting a bomb on the Navy Yard, which goes off with Gibbs, Abby, Ziva, Tony AND McGee all still inside. Ducky gets the news at Palmer's beachside wedding and promptly has a massive heart attack.^[2]
Happens at the end of the first half of every two part episode in the 1960's Batman series.
The Season 2 finale (and Series Finale) of The Colbys had several cliffhangers, most of which were later resolved on parent show Dynasty, the most fantastic being Fallon's abduction by aliens in the California desert. Even for an over-the-top show like The Colbys, this was a Jumping the Shark moment.
Criminal Minds does this with EVERY season finale.
Veronica Mars ends Season One on several cliff hangers. Aaron Echolls has been arrested, but it's unclear how Veronica's relationship will be affected. The audience knows that Logan had an incident on the bridge where he contemplated suicide, although the characters don't.
Boy Meets World ends season 5 with one: Topanga proposes to Cory during their high school graduation ceremony.
Red Dwarf has had bad luck with season cliffhangers: it's tried it twice, and both times immediately went on hiatus for years.
- Season 6 ended with the lead characters apparently murdered by their evil future selves; the audience had to wait three years to find out how they got out of it.
- Season 8 ended with the titular ship being devoured by a genetically enhanced virus while most of the crew evacuates, and the main characters escape to a mirror universe. Except for Rimmer, apparently trapped on the disintegrating ship. The series ends with the screen saying "The End? The smeg it is!". This time the audience had to wait a full decade. And strictly speaking we still don't know what happened next, because the makers invoked an Un Installment and skipped forward to where everything was back to normal.
The third episode of Sherlock season 1 ended with Sherlock and John facing Moriarty with snipers targeting them. It was resolved quickly in the new season when something new and better came up for Moriarty. And he was probably having too much fun with Sherlock to let him die so quickly.
The season 3 finale of How I Met Your Mother ended with Ted proposing to Stella (mind you, this was while Stella was hinted to be the titular Mother) and Barney realizing that he was in love with Robin. Stella said yes in the teaser of the fourth season premiere, and the rest of the episode took place several months after the teaser, partly because the season 3 finale had also featured Barney getting run over by a bus, which took him an entire summer's worth of physical therapy to heal from.
Spooks ended most of its series on these. Exceptions are series three, five and ten (which was the last).
- Series One: Tom's girlfriend and her daughter locked in his house with a bomb, with him refusing to clear the blast radius.
- Series Two: Tom is framed for the assassination of the Chief of the Defence Staff, shoots Harry in the shoulder while trying to escape, and seemingly drowns himself in the ocean.
- Series Four: Angela corners several MI-5 personnel in the street with a sniper rifle, putting a bullet into Adam's lung in the process before lining up a shot on Harry...
- Series Six: Adam appears to mercy kill Jo to spare her from any more torture by the Redbacks, just as CO 19 storms the building.
- Series Seven: The leader of the local FSB office kidnaps Harry for reasons unknown.
- Series Eight: Ros and the Home Secretary get caught in a hotel explosion engineered by Nightingale, with Lucas also getting blown back by the explosion while trying to get back to them.
- Series Nine: Lucas' exact fate isn't specified despite the car alarms and Harry looking down from the rooftop. Harry is told by the Home Secretary "to prepare for life after MI-5"...
The first season of Person of Interest ends with Finch being kidnapped by Root. To track him down, Reese asks the Machine for help and the Machine answers, but the episode ends before we find out what it said.
The 100 tends to end with one each season, setting up the main conflict of the next season.
- Season 1 ends with many of the main characters knocked out with gas grenades by what look like special ops troops. When Clarke wakes up, she’s in an all white quarantine room inside Mount Weather, revealing that they’re the Mountain Men the Grounders have been afraid of.
- Season 2 ends with Jaha and Murphy having made their way to an oddly intact mansion on an island. Murphy sees a video telling how an AI got nuclear launch codes nearly a century ago, while Jaha meets the AI itself.
- Season 3 has the revelation that ALIE was uploading human minds to the City of Light in order to make sure they would survive Praimfaya, a wave of fire and radiation that would likely kill everyone within six months.
- Season 4 ends with a time jump. Even though Earth was supposed to be survivable again after 5 years, it's been a bit more than 6 years later and no one has come down from space or out of the bunker. What Clarke thinks is her friends coming down from space turns out to be a prisoner transport ship coming back to Earth.
- Season 5 ends with the destruction of Earth, for good this time. Rather than waking up from cryosleep after ten years, it's been 125 years, Monty and Harper died but left a son, and he shows Clarke and Bellamy the new planet that Monty found, which might be somewhere they can survive and do better.
- Season 6 ends with two:
  - Sheidheda has been removed from the flame, saving Madi, but escapes, presumably to take over the Eligius IV ship.
  - Diyoza's previously unborn daughter, Hope, comes out of the anomaly as an adult. She talks to Octavia, who recognizes her even though she remembered nothing from her time in the anomaly just minutes before. Hope stabs Octavia in the stomach then passes out. Bellamy tries to hold Octavia up as she's bleeding out, until the anomaly comes in to the room and she disappears in a flash of green.

Other

Greg Farshtey's method of writing when sitting down for the latest Bionicle story chapter is to think of a cliffhanger, and hope to find a way to resolve it in the next. Not just individual chapters, the stories tend to end in cliffhangers too. On some occasions, this proved to be a reckless idea, since he couldn't resolve them thanks to his busy schedule. In these cases he assumed the villains simply turned back or just didn't find time to carry out any evil plans. In other cases the constant reliance on more and more extreme and forced cliffhangers lead to the serial inching close to Jumping the Shark.

Video Games

In Golden Sun, you have only managed to climb up one of the four Elemental Lighthouses when you reach the final Dungeon, Venus Lighthouse. If you haven't been reading a guide (or spoiled by this example) you'd assume you were halfway through the game. To be fair, the game does provide some hints, the Infinity+1 Sword is contained inside, and the music does lend the tower a tone of The Very Definitely Final Dungeon. But once you reach the top, the game throws both the main antagonists of the story at you, you beat them, then they combine and throw the Final Boss at you. Once you beat that, the game just ends. The missing friends are still missing, the party travels off to parts unknown, and the credits roll. Quite an impressive feat, making a very big cliffhanger that wasn't resolved for a few years when the second game came out.
- To be fair, this cliffhanger is the result of Camelot splitting what was supposed to be one game into two games, Golden Sun 1 and The Lost Age.
- Another one is at the end of The Lost Age. Alex has just been granted demi-god powers, but is then pinned to a mountaintop, and sent crashing down to the Earth, however, The Wise One implies they will meet again, and the last shot of the game, is Mt. Aleph still standing...
- The third game Dark Dawn has its own as well. After everything looks happy and peaceful. The heroes return home and they realize that there was one thing they didn't look into to solve. Now it appears to be far more threatening then it was when they last encountered it.
Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood ends with a major cliffhanger. After getting brutally smacked down by Super Sonic, Imperator Ix commands the wormhole connecting Sonic's world with the Twilight Cage to close before he disappears. The whole team rushes right on out to the Cyclone to jet and get the hell out of dodge before they find themselves trapped for all eternity. And lest you not forget how the flow of time differs in the Twilight Cage with how Ix could still be alive after four thousand years, take a moment to remember who stayed behind before you crossed dimensions and what he could possibly do with all that time...
- How's Sonic Chronicles: Eggman's Revenge for a sequel title?
  - I perfer Sonic Chronicles: The Eggman Empire.
A (particularly frustrating) example with Halo 2: Cortana in the clutches of the Gravemind. Miranda, Arbiter and Johnson stuck on Delta Halo. Master Chief emerging from slipspace, stowed away on an enemy ship, to find Earth's defenses about to be overwhelmed by the Covenant fleet. Roll credits with nothing more than a heroic one-liner. Only partially resolved with Halo 3 - We see Master Chief ariving on earth, but we don't see how Arbiter and co get back. How MC actually got off the enemy ship is explored in a spin-off comic series, and Cortana's fate is a plot-point for the rest of the game.
Cliffhangers are standard for Telltale Games, as their games come in monthly installments.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 ends on a rather big one. The Invasion of the US is stopped and presumably the US counterstrike is about to begin. Soap and Price are wanted Fugitives, Shepherd is dead but his plan is in motion and you still have no idea where Makarov is.
- The Sequel shows that the war becomes over near the end of the game, and also Soap dies from a later injury from a mission, and Price gets a BSOD, and in the final mission, Price kills Makarov with Punches and with the finish of Makarov being hanged.
BlazBlue loves this:
- The original Arcade game always ends with the characters getting sent back in the past due to being in a time loop. Most worse is Ragna's, where he gets to fuse into a monster, sent back as a destructive monster in the past that gets killed.
- The console version had the crew getting out of the time loop... just in time for the supposed Big Bad, Terumi, showing himself off and got away scots free for his next plan... giving Tsubaki the order to assassinate Noel and Jin (still a psycho).
- The original Arcade of the sequel eventually had the characters confront Terumi, beat him... then Terumi reveals that he's just warming up and he summons Noel, turned into a mindless monster bent on destroying the world, to fight you... and the game ends.
- The console version of the sequel threw A LOT of surprises: Noel gets saved and Jin stops being a psycho. However, Tsubaki had a new resentment with Noel and stuck with NOL, thus not quite giving Jin and Noel a happy end for all they've been through. Then, the originally good-hearted Litchi turns antagonist and joins NOL so she can procure the cure for Arakune which is in NOL all while having her degenerate further, and lastly... Terumi is not the Big Bad. The Big Bad, the NOL Imperator, turns out to be Saya, Ragna and Jin's sister! Then they all head off to Ikaruga for the sequel to come. And if the supplying material is to be trusted... turns out Saya was just being a Puppet King, Terumi still retains his Big Bad Duumvirate position with Relius.
Asura's Wrath. In multiple times in the True End. Deus is dead, Asura can finally reunite with Mithra... and suddenly Olga appears and threatens to kill her for Deus' death... until all of the sudden, that Golden Spider accompanying Asura most of the time kills Olga, possesses Mithra and... the end, that's it. Regardless, at the end of the game, Asura is still pissed off.

Web Comics

Parody: Terror Island theorem 099 ends with a caption saying "Cliffhanger!" but it was resolved in two days, which is the usual time between strips.
Whether on purpose or not, Misfile's weekend breaks usually fall just as it seems some new tidbit of plot information will be revealed or that something exiting will happen. Fans of the comic have taken to calling them "Chrishangers," after the artist.
The author of the webcomic Sequential Art recently managed to pick the most irritating part to his break with the comic.
Lampshaded here in The Way of the Metagamer.
MS Paint Adventures' Homestuck. Pretty much almost every page ends with a cliffhanger on purpose, although these are generally resolved quickly. A more common way of setting up a Cliff Hanger involves leaving a certain character in a predicament and then abruptly switching the point of view to a completely different character.
The Dreamer uses these a lot.
Bob and George: An Unnecessary Cliffhanger
Chapter 27 of Gunnerkrigg Court (which updates Mon/Wed/Fri) ended on a Wednesday, as the main character is caught past curfew. Friday was the chapter bonus page, and Monday the title page of chapter 28, meaning readers had to wait a full week to see a resolution.
Dan of El Goonish Shive likes to use this a lot. Especially on Fridays as one has to wait 2 days for a resolution.
Big reveals in Sluggy Freelance will always happen on Monday. Cances are, if a monday comic ends in a cliffhanger, you will not see it resolved all week, as the scene will either just cut away, or all subsequent comics will just serve to drag out the situation even more. Observe: Bad guy 2.0 is behind the door. He's plugged into that machine. Random unexpected distraction. There he is talking off panel tomorrow we'll find out who he is for sure! Just kidding, it wasn't him. See you next week.
In Wake the Sleepers, the second chapter ends with Locke's rescuer declaring him a deceiver -- and the promise that chapter 3 will start a month later.
Each major Story Arc of The Order of the Stick ends with one:
- Dungeon Crawlin' Fools: The Order defeat Xykon and destroys the dungeon they'd spent the entire story up to that point in and assume their quest is finished—completely unaware that Xykon's Soul Jar survived and escaped the dungeon with his chief minions, the Linear Guild also escaped from prison, and that a mysterious figure (later revealed to be the Paladin Miko Miyazaki) has been sent to confront them over the Gate they destroyed with the dungeon.
- No Cure For The Paladin Blues: The Order now know the importance of the Gates and are preparing to track down and protect the others; meanwhile, Xykon (who the heroes have only just learned is still alive) has assembled an army of hobgoblins and is preparing to march on Azure City (where the Order currently is) and take their Gate by force, while Nale and the Guild plot their revenge against the Order.
- War and XPs: In what may be the largest cliffhanger yet, the hobgoblins have overrun Azure City, Roy is dead, and the Order has been scattered. And on top of that, we see Kubota plotting against Hinjo with the aid of a mysterious figure standing off panel; this new antagonist's identity Qarr the imp isn't revealed until well into the next arc.
- Don't Split The Party: A subtler cliffhanger than the previous ones; the Order is reunited and is going after the next Gate, but as they do V's Familiar Blackwing reveals to him/her what he saw in the rift of the Snarl's prison -- a planet.

Web Original

Spoofed on Homestar Runner in the Strong Bad Email "cliffhangers", where Strong Bad is asked by a fan to "Resolve all the cliffhangers, please". After showing three mock cliffhangers, the email ends on an actual cliffhanger when Strong Bad's Lappy 486 computer gets stolen.
The online novel The Saga of Tuck has (for now) 142 chapters, each almost always ending on a cliff hanger.

Western Animation

Subverted in the South Park episode "Professor Chaos", which appears to end on a cliffhanger: "Will Professor Chaos' latest plot succeed and be the final undoing of Earth? And which boy has been chosen as the replacement for Kenny? And which of these South Park residents was killed and will never be seen again?" (The first two were already the focuses of the plot, but the last ones comes out of nowhere). "These questions will be answered... right now: No, Tweek, and Ms. Choksondik."
- South Park also squeezed the concept for all the humor and frustration they could in the "Who is Eric Cartman's Father" two-parter, "Cartman's Mom Is a Dirty Slut" and "Cartman's Mom is Still a Dirty Slut". They teased the fans mercilessly by splitting the two episodes up with an unrelated full-length April Fools' Day Terrance and Phillip episode.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003) its fond of the season-ending cliffhanger: three of its seven (As of 2008) seasons (1,2,4) end this way. Season 4's cliffhanger is notable for being in danger of never being properly resolved, since for never-quite-adequately-explained reasons, the people behind the show decided to skip season 5 and go from season 4 to season 6 without explanation, ignoring the cliffhanger. After several delays, the "Lost Season", as it came to be called, began airing on February 2008—a year and a half later than it would have, had it aired normally.
Happens in The Simpsons: Who shot Mr. Burns? Obvious homage/parody of Dallas.
- 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 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 everything.
Subverted beautifully in Frisky Dingo. An episode ends with an almost literal cliffhanger as a woman is hanging from a ledge of a tall structure. Then, in the "On the Next..." sequence, Killface says "Oh my God, she fell."
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 supervillain escaping confinement and needing to be put down with the Elements of Harmony. Both endings are also directed in a similar way, which did not go unnoticed.
- Season 1's first episode ends with the return of Nightmare Moon. The only forces capable of putting a stop to her plan are either inactive or nowhere to be seen. Resolved in part 2 when the Elements of Harmony are reactivated and used to save the day.
- Season 2's first episode ends with Discord successfully mind breaking the mane cast (who cannot activate their trump card in this state) and establishing a reign of chaos upon Equestria. Resolved in part 2 when Twilight gets the gang back together, allowing them to put Discord back where he belongs.

Unresolved Cliffhangers

Anime

X 1999: Is Kamui really dead? No one but CLAMP knows, since the series has been on hiatus since 2003.
The end of The Tower of Druaga: The Aegis of Uruk has Neeba and Kaaya abandoning their parties to climb up the heretofore unknown upper half of the tower. Even after the second season has started, no one knows what's going on with them and some of those left behind.
At the end of the first season of Sekirei, Minato manages to help Haruka and Kuno escape, which was the focus of the last portion of the season, but the Sekirei plan/battle has just begun, and the ending shows a bunch of loose ends which have yet to be resolved. The main Big Bad and game master even mentions the game is far from over. Fortunately Season 2 has arrived, and covers the next portion of the series.
- So it is now a resolved cliffhanger?