Your Princess Is in Another Castle

"Son of a...!!"

THIS ROOM IS AN ILLUSION AND IS A TRAP DEVISUT BY SATAN.
 GO AHEAD DAUNTLESSLY! MAKE RAPID PROGRES!

(Player is then forced to replay last six levels. On a time limit.)
—Ghosts 'n Goblins

The plot has been resolved... but the work isn't actually over yet. Before long, there's a twist thrown in. Alternately the plot looks all resolved, and we've almost reached the end, so it actually seems like everything's working out... but then the writers pull a Cliff Hanger situation to finish everything off.

In terms of providing a genuine surprise, the trope works to varying degrees in different media, from being nearly unusable in books (the reader can tell how much is left by page count, but unexpected sequels can occasionally catch one by surprise) to completely effective in single-media computer games, particularly RPGs. For some reason, there has been a trend of including a segment which transparently pretends to be the climax or endgame when it obviously isn't, not just because there are vast expanses of the map you haven't explored yet or plot threads that haven't been tied up yet, but because you're still on Disc 1 of 4. Expect to see The Man Behind the Man make his first appearance, perhaps offing the guy you thought was the Big Bad, as well as a Climax Boss or two and maybe a traitor. The heroes may find that a minor crime has revealed a major plot.

When done at the end of a movie, it is used as a tease for a sequel. Of course, that could depend on whether the movie is good/successful enough to warrant a sequel.

In Crime and Punishment Series, this trope usually results in the detained suspect being Acquitted Too Late. In RPGs, this often takes the form of a Disc One Final Dungeon. See also Snicket Warning Label, Nice Job Breaking It, Hero, and Shaggy Dog Story. Closely related to You Can't Thwart Stage One; may also overlap with Failure Is the Only Option.

If the twist never comes, Ending Fatigue awaits. Contrast Left Hanging.

Examples of Your Princess Is in Another Castle include:

Anime and Manga

  • Gao Gai Gar FINAL serves up a variation in the form of a battle with a bit of a Lensman Arms Race thrown in. Several times during the final battle between 3G and the Sol Masters, it looks as if one side or the other has won the fight only for the other side to come back and kick some more ass. First, all the good guys transform/combine and bust out their best moves, only for the Sol Masters to regenerate and "kill" the heroes. Then Mamoru gets a Determinator moment that kicks off a slew of My Name Is Inigo Montoya moments from the defeated heroes, coupled with more than a few Limit Breaks and Eleventh Hour Superpowers which seem to defeat the villains for real... only for the villains to regenerate in droves, and seemingly kill off any hope for the heroes to win...

Palus Abel: It appears that you've lost, doesn't it?
Soldato-J: ...you think so?
* Cue the dropping of hammers*

  • Mazinger Z: Big Bad Dr. Hell is defeated before the final episode... and, needless to say, the final episode wasn't just a peaceful day. Basically, one of the Co-Dragons was a Dragon with an Agenda was working for an even Bigger Bad, and he sent several Robeasts to destroy Mazinger-Z, more powerful than anything Dr. Hell had ever built. They completely succeeded in destroying all Humongous Mecha of the heroes and their Home Base, but before Kouji got killed, he was saved by Tetsuya Tsurugi and his brand-new Humongous Mecha performing the first of his many Big Damn Heroes. All of it was done to set up the sequel, Great Mazinger.
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh:
    • Just when Seto Kaiba is about to save his little brother, Pegasus traps Mokuba's soul in a trading card. Parodied in Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series, when Pegasus actually says: "I'm afraid your Princess is in another castle, Kaiba-boy."
    • Also a common structure for individual episodes: if the hero's just played a game-winning combo, the victory music is swelling, and there's more than three minutes left in the episode, something's about to go wrong.
  • The central plot of My-HiME seemingly gets resolved with the defeat of the Searrs Ancient Conspiracy. Even the end credits change... except that can't possibly be it, as it's only episode 15 of 26. In the next episode, a rather cruel twist is promptly thrown in.
    • The manga version also throws in a Your Princess Is in Another Castle halfway through, when the HiME unite to defeat Nagi and the Orphans. Right after their celebration, Searrs arrives on the scene and shoots everything to hell by deposing Mashiro as headmaster and effectively holding the entire school hostage, stating that she and the HiME have outgrown their purpose now that the Orphans are "no longer a threat".
  • Episode 11 of Cowboy Bebop has most of the cast in a position (suffering from an unknown poison and days away from coming into human contact) where we're left to assume they all died, apparently. Episode 12 begins with Spike waking up scared from a really bad nightmare.
  • Naruto: Well Sasuke, you finally killed your brother and avenged your clan... wait Itachi was doing it because higher-ups at Konoha told him to? Fuck.
    • Even during the final battle with Itachi, Sasuke knew that there was one other person involved in the massacre, as Itachi could not have killed the entire clan alone, and thus found out about Madara from Itachi. His revenge would not have ended with Itachi's death, even if he was not expecting that twist.
    • In the Land of Birds filler arc, Naruto, Tenten and Neji seemingly prove that the Strategist impersonated the Cursed Warrior in order to plan a coup at the end of the second episode in the arc. The arc gets more complex from there.
  • Subverted in Mahoujin Guru Guru. After our heroes have defeated their first boss, Kasegi Gold, the stage he appeared on lights up and the heroes freak because they think something worse is about to show up. The good news is, it's just the Old Kita Kita Man. The bad news is that, given Kita Kita Man is an old guy in a hula skirt who dances non-stop, he is arguably worse than Kasegi Gold.
  • In Code Geass R2 Episode 15, Charles pulls this on Lelouch. After Lelouch geasses Charles to die, which he does, he realizes that he didn't get any answers out of him and starts regretting killing him right off the bat. Wait, Charles is immortal?! Oh Crap.
    • Episode 22 of the first season: Wait, Euphemia's peace proposal is genuine, viable and she knows about Lelouch? My, this could not only solve the episode's issues, but the whole season's main conflict. All they need to do is to walk to the stage and announce it. But the episode is only halfway through..
  • Episode 23 of Solty Rei ends with Ashley and Eunomia defeated, and the city rebuilding, complete with Hard Work Montage. Unfortunately, Solty discovers that Eirene is about to pull a Colony Drop on the city. Not good.
  • A couple of good examples from R.O.D the TV: In the first episode, a nameless villain tries to take out Nenene with a bomb. He gives a little speech and gets beaten up by the Paper Sisters. Nenene waves goodbye and boards her plane back to Japan. Cue credits? Nope, turns out the bomber's brother is waiting for her on the plane. Later in the series, the sisters are sent back home to Hong Kong and what follows is a sweet episode about Anita saying goodbye to her friends at school, and Hisa trying to work up the nerve to express her feelings to Anita. The girls have their Crowning Moment of Heartwarming, and just when you think it's over, Lee strolls in, reveals that he actually works for Dokusensha, and kidnaps Nenene with a group of armed guards
  • Happens in many Magical Girl series, but notably in Sailor Moon S. The Dragon is cornered, Sailor Moon is powering up her attack, it's even playing the Moon Spiral Heart Attack stock footage—but it's way too early in the episode for it, the stock footage is intercut with the Dragon's reaction, and the background music hasn't segued into Sailor Moon's theme ... you're not even supposed to think this is going to work.
  • In Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, the main characters are all dead, there's a nice ending monologue, and everything looks wrapped up... in the fourth episode. Turns out it is over... Onikakushi-hen, anyway...
  • At the end of Rebuild of Evangelion Evangelion 2.0, Shinji apparently starts Third Impact, which those who have watched the original know marks the end of things. This early? Even those who haven't would guess that it's not over given that four films are intended. Well, nope. A lance impales Unit 01 and Kaworu descends in Unit 06. Time to wait for 3.0!
    • That's why true Otaku anime fans should never skip the credits.
      • We just skip to the end of credits.
  • Death Note: About two thirds of the way through the full story line, Light Yagami uses Misa and Rem to defeat L and then assumes his identity, becoming the 2nd L. L-Kira exalts in finally becoming the God of the New World... Five years later, L is delighted to discover that 1st L had made provisions for his defeat; he has successors eager to avenge him and show their worth by defeating the one who killed their hero.
  • One Piece: Well, Luffy, it seems you finally got to the Sixth Level of Impel Down to rescue your imprisoned older brother. Sure it literally took ten years off your life and you had to suffer eighteen hours of excruciating agony to be healed after being wiped off the floor by the head warden, but at least you got there in ti- Oh Crap, it looks like you just missed your brother being transferred to his execution site! Tough break, buddy.
  • Well, Ed, after only a couple of volumes spanning a few years of misadventures and a recent attack by a serial alchemist-killer, you've finally found a guy who has that which will solve all your problems: the Philosopher's Stone. Wait, he won't give it to you? It's got a terrible secret? Well, crap.
  • Legend of Galactic Heroes has 'invasions to end the war' happening near constantly. Given that the show is 110 episodes long, no one is really expecting invasions in episodes 20 or 40 to really succeed.
  • 20th Century Boys is all about a group of friends reuniting to stop a masked cult leader known only as Friend from taking over the world, based on a pretend evil plot that they dreamt up in their youth out of boredom. The first part of the series is all about them trying to uncover the cult's plot, which they learn involves destroying Tokyo with a giant mech on the final day of the Twentieth Century. Eventually the attack happens and they set out to stop it. Seeing as how everything so far's been building up to this moment, we must be at the climax of the series, right? Nope, you're only 5 volumes into a 24 volume series, buddy. Turn's out that Friend was using the robot (which is actually a fake) so he could destroy it himself and make him and his cult look the hero, whilst framing the actual heroes. Suddenly, the story jumps forward 15 years and Friend is now the leader of an oppressive Japan, with most of the main characters scattered, in prison, or presumed dead. Oh Crap.
  • Wow it looks like Ryoga's training won't help him against Ranma! Listen to that victorious fight musi...wait...Ranma can't hurt him...well fuck he's screwed.
  • Bleach pulled off a textbook example. Aizen's been sealed, his Hogyoku powers are gone, the last Arrancar has been defeated, and Ichigo's shinigami powers are now gone. Ichigo and his True Companions are reunited and plot what they will do when their lives return to normal. ...Then Ichigo collapses to the ground screaming while his friends gasp in horror.
    • Way before that, there was Nnoitra stepping in after Ichigo had just defeated Grimmjow and is too exhausted to fight.
      • Then, after Nnoitra has finally been defeated, Starrk Flash Steps in and kidnaps Orihime.
  • Black Cat leaves you in disbelief when it pulls this off in episode (if you are watching it on DVD and so realise that it has to end somehow at episode 24). So at episode 20, Creed Diskenth is finally defeated, and carried off by Echidna Parass after Eve disables the nano-machines in his body, making him mortal, and then Mason suddenly turns up, accompanied by Doctor, Shiki and several Chrono numbers, announcing that they plan to shape a new world order, resulting in an arc that is even more extravagant than the Apostles of the Stars arc, but that lasts just 4 episodes.
  • "That won't be necessary" is Homura Akemi's Catch Phrase, usually said as she pulls a Big Damn Heroes, preventing Madoka from having to make a contract.
  • Great job, Vulcan! Thanks to you, the cursed knife is pulled out, and Kanon is saved! Huh? Why isn't she waking up...? Apollo put herself in magical stasis to survive the curse, and we need to find your sister Mercury to get through to her? Here We Go Again.
  • Occurs in Fushigi Yuugi. Miaka's quest to summon the god Suzaku looks like it's on track to succeed, but when they finally get all the warriors together for the critical ceremony, it's sabotaged. This requires the good guys to go searching for the Cosmic Keystones that will allow them to try again, which takes up the second half of the series.

And ironically, as a direct result of their efforts to sabotage the Suzaku ceremony, the Seiryuu warriors also are prevented from summoning their god, and have to go looking for the same magical items.

  • The Fist of the North Star TV series has a literal example of this trope as Kenshiro enters the hideout of his rival Shin to rescue his kidnapped fiance Yuria, only to be told by Shin's informant and Filler Villain Joker that Shin has moved his army to a new hideout. This also happens in The Movie, when Kenshiro arrives too late to Southern Cross after Raoh has beaten Shin and taken Yuria.
  • Lou Collins in Gunnm: Last Order. Repeatedly.
  • Inuyasha: Happens a lot to Team Inuyasha whenever they battle Naraku; by the time he goes down for good, they've been to as many castles and killed as many fake Big Bads as Mario himself.
  • Fairy Tail: After the Crowning Moment of Awesome of everybody combining their strength to prevent the lacrima from crashing into Extalia, Erza Knightwalker shoots Pantherlily In the Back, and her army arrives to attack the heroes.
    • The end of the Tenrou Island arc The group manage to fend off the dark guild Grimorie Heart and protect the island. All seems well and the only matter now is to have the heroes heal up. ..And then an evil dragon unintentionally summoned appears.
  • Bakuman｡: The main characters consistently come really close to accomplishing their dreams, only to have to restart from the beginning due to some unforeseen reason.


Comic Books

  • Scott McCloud's Zot featured a story dealing with a high school girl who is experiencing attraction to another girl. The second girl is known to her classmates to be a lesbian, and is tormented because of it. The first girl is trying to suppress her feelings. The story ends with the second girl passing the first in the hallway, and trying to be friendly. The first girl ignores her, looks very sad, and then the letters page appears, which traditionally is printed at the end of a comic. But after the letters page, the first girl calls back to the second girl in a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming, and a later issue shows them to have started a happy relationship.
  • In one Captain Marvel story, Billy Batson is forced to storm a tower in his normal form to rescue his sister. (The tower was indestructible, and the openings and passages are really small because the villains were tiny aliens). After going through hell, when he finally reaches the top... Mary was in the next tower over all along.
  • Thank you Donna Troy, Kyle Rayner, Jason Todd, and Bob the Monitor! But Ray Palmer Is In Another Universe.


Film

  • Taking Lives, in which a police chief says, "Ah, it's over", after about 70 minutes. Naturally, it isn't.
  • Happens in Cloverfield. Twice.
  • In Austin Powers in Goldmember, Austin gets Dr. Evil arrested in the very beginning, making it clear that something will inevitably go wrong. Dr. Evil even does a musical number pointing this out ("Austin caught me in the first act/it's all backwards what's with that"?). Notably, Austin does shout "Not So Fast!" when he bursts into Dr. Evil's lair just as the villain finishes explaining his plan.
  • The Halloween remake features the famous exchange in which Michael Myers is compared to the boogeyman. For those who watched the original, movie's over, right? Not exactly ...
  • Dragonslayer. The villagers celebrate when Galen causes an avalanche to block the dragon Vermithrax's cave entrance, despite never seeing the dragon actually die or taking into consideration that there might be more caves leading out of its lair. All Galen did was piss it off.
  • In |Poltergeist, Tangina Barrons successfully tells the malevolent ghosts to cross over, sends Diane in after Carol Anne, declares "This house is clean", and departs. The next scene feels like you should be reaching for your coat and gathering up your empty popcorn buckets; the family is happily reunited and getting ready to leave the house forever. But then all hell breaks loose, the "Beast" attacks again, the sinister clown you've been waiting all movie to go berserk finally does, coffins erupt out of a swimming pool, and the entire house implodes. THEN the movie is over.
  • Partly subverted in the original Prime Suspect. From the start the police have an obvious suspect and appear to be well on the way to solving the case. They even anticipate beating the force record. But if you thought "it can't be him", you're wrong. It was him, and at no point is there any suggesting that they had the wrong suspect. It just turned out to be a bit more difficult to prove it than they thought.
  • The Ring movies lead to a (seemingly) climactic scene in which the heroine goes inside the well to find the earthly remains of the Cursed Video's creator. These scenes are filled with dread and anticipation, as the heroine is minutes away from the 7-day deadline (and so, it's a race against her own death.) When they do find the body, the movies release the tension as though the whole plot had been a "give the ghost a proper burial and give her peace." The American remake is particularly blatant about this angle. Cue the heroine returning home, having defeated the curse... only to find out her ex-husband didn't, finding the body did nothing, and the terror comes back full-force. "You weren't supposed to help her." Gee, thanks, Aiden, you could have told us that half an hour ago.
  • Toward the end of The Lost World: Jurassic Park The main characters have escaped the raptors, they're on the helicopter, and all seems right with the world. Oh wait, we have a half hour left? Time for the T-rex to romp through the city.
  • Happens in The Dark Knight Saga - it looks like Dent is being set up for a Sequel Hook, then the other third of the movie happens.
    • Or, arguably, even earlier. Joker's in the MCU and Batman can rest easy... then MCU blows sky-high, as does Rachel Dawes.
  • In Clash of the Titans, Perseus frees the city of Joppa from its curse fairly early in the film, and the good guys throw a big party—only for a much worse crisis to then present itself before they're even through celebrating.
  • In The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo and Sam initially think their journey is over after they get the Ring to Rivendell for safekeeping at around halfway through the movie. Unfortunately, Elrond realizes that they cannot keep it there, and Frodo accepts the task of destroying it.
    • There is another moment around this time, after the council of Elrond, when the Fellowship is formed. The nine stand in a pretty line, Elrond pronounces "you shall be the Fellowship ... of the Ring!", the theme swells and half the audience start to retrieve coats, finish off drinks and generally make ready to leave. Then find out there's another hour and a half to go. And, in some cases, hadn't realised that even then there were two more films before ring meets lava.
    • Also, Sam thinks his journey is over when the fellowship reaches Redhorn Mountain, which he confuses with Mount Doom. Not that it isn't a mountain of doom by itself.
    • In the book you would think everything is done once the Ring is destroyed, but then we have the Scouring of the Shire, which was left out of the movie for both this reason and lack of time.
  • Happened in Spy Game. Robert Redford thinks he's successfully plotted to rescue Brad Pitt, starts walking out of the building, hands his tag to the security guard, jubilant music plays... and we're only an hour into the movie.
  • Se7en. You think the movie is about catching the serial killer, do you? Well, he gives himself up when there's half an hour of movie left.
  • In The Haunting in Connecticut, after Reverend Popescu finds Jonah's remains and removes them from the house, he assures the Campbells that the house should now be safe, and drives away. As it turns out, this only makes things worse-- Jonah wasn't a malevolent spirit, but was trying to protect the family from the real evil force in the house, the angry ghosts of the people Aickman desecrated with his necromancy.
  • Casino Royale featured a lovely ending: Le Chiffre has lost and died and James Bond gets The Chick he's been eying for the entire movie. They kiss and begin a romance. Everything is hunky-dory ... then Vesper betrays Bond, running away with the cash to pay her fiancee's ransom.
  • In Doomsday, the protagonist has dealt with both Sol and Kane, and is on her way to the border with the MacGuffin. Sol shows up for round 2.
  • Australia. The film could easily have been split in two, which might have been for the better.
  • Letters to Juliet: Sophie's boss wonders this about her article.
  • Air Force One has been secured, the (surviving) hostages freed, the hijackers killed, and the evil general has been stopped from getting out of prison. Of course, they are still in the middle of hostile airspace, with enemy MiGs now closing in with the failure of the hijacking plot, and Halo Flight's F-15s still haven't had the chance to do anything really cool. Oh, and the traitor still hasn't been caught.
  • Occurs in Dark Star, where the self-destruct has seemingly been aborted.
  • Scott Pilgrim vs. the World does this multiple times. Scott defeats the Big Bad who turns out to be Not Quite Dead and then kills Scott. Scott has an extra life, though, so he comes back and defeats the Big Bad again, who turns out to be Not Quite Dead again, but this time Scott is prepared and defeats him once and for all. Then it turns out Scott has to defeat his evil alter ego, Nega-Scott, but this "battle" takes place off-screen rather than becoming Ending Fatigue, this becomes the Crowning Moment of Funny.
  • In 12 Monkeys, James Cole finally figures out who the Army of the Twelve Monkeys are: Relatively harmless pranksters. Convinced that the Bad Future was just a figment of his imagination, he books a flight to the tropic with Kathryn. But before he can board the plane he receives an another message from the future: The End of the World as We Know It is at hand and he can still stop it.
  • Speed did this multiple times. First it appears that the Big Bad will be caught when they figured out who he is. It turns out it was a trap. Then later they managed to get all the passengers out of the bus safely without the villain knowing and sets a trap to capture him. But he caught on and the movie still goes on. Then the villain is finally killed. Yet there's still a couple more minutes of movie time left.
  • In Zardoz, the scene where Zed reveals how he learned Zardoz was actually The WiZard of Oz makes you think the movie's wrapping up when, in fact, there's still almost an hour to go.
  • Mortal Kombat (which set up a sordid sequel).
  • American Dreamer has a fake out ending, where it turns out Cathy's antics under Easy Amnesia got her into trouble with drug lords.


Literature

  • Agatha Christie is the queen of this trope. If there are more than twenty pages left to go, there's a twist on the way.
  • In H.P. Lovecraft's The Dunwich Horror, the Old Man Whateley prophesied a grandson of him will cry the name of his father on the mountaintop. Not many paragraphs later Wilbur Whateley screams the name of Yog-Sothoth on the top of the mountain... but the story still has six chapters to go. Turns out Lavinia Whateley had another son.
  • There's a fairly nasty use of this in Tad Williams' epic fantasy series Memory Sorrow and Thorn. Near the end, as the heroes are fighting their way into Green Angel Tower for the final confrontation with the Storm King, they encounter Evil Sorcerer Pryrates finishing off the last of the heroic army's decoy soldiers. Miriamele catches him by surprise and apparently kills him with a Norn arrow. Of course, it's not that easy, as he proceeds to get up a moment later, complete with Evil Gloating.
  • In the first Kate Daniels novel, Kate finds the bad guy right where they were supposed to be, foils the evil plot and the evil back up plot, and even manages to go on a semi-successful date. Only something keeps nagging her—catching the bad guy was too easy and there are too many loose ends. None of the other characters believe her, but the reader does because we're only 75% through the book. And sure enough, the next chapter has another body turn up.
  • Halfway to the Grave, the first Night Huntress book, is drawing to a conclusion when 30 pages from the end a new plot twist develops for a Cliff Hanger / Downer Ending.
  • The Soviet fleet carrying out The Hunt for Red October has withdrawn after the eponymous sub's apparent scuttling and the defectors seem home free about 80% into the book. Cue one lingering Soviet attack sub and its attempt to take the October down.
  • Discworld:
    • Done three times in Unseen Academicals ("You think it's over?"), as a Shout-Out to an incident at the end of a Real Life UK football match.
    • In The Colour of Magic, where the words "THE END" are followed immediately by another four pages of story, fooling nobody.
  • Done superbly in Laurens Van Der Post's "A Story Like the Wind." It initially seems like a story about a French boy growing up in Africa, coming of age, dealing with the death of his father, and falling in love. The book winds down with most of the plotlines reasonably tied up... then in the last eleven pages, revolutionaries show up and kill almost everyone. Then you realize that the entire first book was there to convince the reader that Francois really is awesome enough to pull off all the crazy stuff he does in the second book, beginning with him sneaking past enemy lines back to his house and blowing it up.
  • Jim Butcher does this on the last page of Changes. And it's a doozy.
  • In John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman there are not two but three endings, the first of which comes about halfway through the book.
  • The Armageddon Inheritance makes good use of this. You've destroyed the enemy vanguard with a supernova, you've successfully lured the main body of their fleet into a trap and what's left is running away with their tails between their legs. Wait, what do you mean they've still got another quarter of a million ships, which just happen to be their largest and most powerful designs? But we've not even got two dozen ships left! And our flagship has engine damage!
  • Harry Potter
    • In Half-Blood Prince, Harry and Dumbledore risk life and limb, and give Draco the opportunity to invade the school, to get their hands on one of Voldemort's horcruxes. Dumbledore dies, Snape betrays them all, Neville is seriously hurt, and Bill is permanently scarred. And then the Horcrux turns out to be a fake; the real one was stolen years ago. Sorry Harry, but your Horcrux is in another castle.
    • In Deathly Hallows, when they go to Godric's Hollow because they think Gryffindor's sword is there, end up being ambushed by Nagini disguised as Bathilda Bagshot, and the sword was never there after all - Snape had it all along.
  • In the third Fablehaven book it turns out that one of the artifacts has been moved. When Kendra and her allies attempt to retrieve the artifact hidden in the Lost Mesa, it turns out that Patton Burgess, a previous Fablehaven caretaker, had long ago moved the artifact to a new location in Fablehave for safekeeping... shame that three people had already died getting in before they found that out.
  • Every Lensman book that stars Kimball Kinnison (the last four) end with him and the rest of Civilization thinking that they've finally for real this time finished off the Boskonian empire.
  • In the Hollow Kingdom Trilogy, Kate sacrifices herself to the goblin King, Marak, and becomes his wife in order to save her sister, Emily. Sad ending, right? Nope. The story then skips ahead more than a year for the last few chapters and introduces a new sorcerer villain who is out to enslave the goblins.
  • In Warrior Cats, during the Omen of the Stars book The Fourth Apprentice, the heroes are about to have their confrontation with the beavers, but there is still a quarter of the book left. Cue the heroes being on the receiving end of a Curb Stomp Battle and having to find a different way to defeat the beavers.
    • Also in Warrior Cats, during the Graystripe's Adventure spinoff, the plot was about getting home to the Clans. At the end of Warrior's Refuge, Graystripe and Millie finally manage to reach Graystripe's forest, but as everyone who was following the series knows, the forest was destroyed and the Clans left to find a new home. This led to the events of the final book in the spinoff, Warrior's Return.


Live Action TV

  • Multiple episodes of House seemingly end with House and his cronies having cured the patient du jour, only for them to develop a crazy (and often, violently disgusting) new symptom, deepening the mystery. One episode did the opposite; they let their patient die, but then, just as they're start the autopsy...
  • Ditto for Sunday night detective dramas like Midsomer Murders. If the detectives have it all neatly worked out, and there's more than twenty minutes left of the two hours, then they've missed something. (Or someone else is about to drop dead.)
  • Doctor Who,
    • "The Lazarus Experiment": Lazarus has been seemingly defeated, and his prone body is being loaded into an ambulance. But it's only the beginning of the third act, so he turns back into a monster and kills the ambulance crew.
    • The show also does something similar in the episode "Utopia". Up until then the new series had only had two-part season finales. That season seemed to follow this, as the problem of the episode had been solved by the end... but a new problem shows up at the same time, as the Master comes back, leading to a Cliff Hanger into the last two episodes.
    • "The Invasion of Time": The Doctor's Xanatos Speed Chess against the Vardans has paid off, and everyone's ready to celebrate, but wait... what's this? Sontarans?! Oh Crap. Partially spoiled by the BBC announcer who called it a six-part serial from the start, confirming that things wouldn't be resolved by the end of episode 4.
    • "A Good Man Goes To War" pulls this, as The Doctor's plan succeeds brilliantly with almost no loss of life... except the episode's only half over, the Headless Monks may still be lurking around, as they have no actual life signs to monitor, Melody is revealed to be part Time Lord, and everything generally goes to hell as the monks launch a counter attack. Then, the bad stuff begins to happen. Madame Kovarian pulls the rug out from everyone by showing she still has Melody, and the "Melody" they thought they had rescued was just a Ganger, and, oh, yeah, River Song reveals herself to be Melody, all grown up.
  • The end of "Phase One" of Alias. The Alliance has been destroyed, Sydney and Vaughn have kissed... then Francine gets offed with a headshot by someone who's been genetically altered to look like her.
  • Naturally, a twist-loving show like Lost does this a few times.
    • A notable example is the third season finale, at the end of which Jack has called a boat that appears to be coming to rescue them, the Others have been largely defeated, Ben is a captive, the Rousseaus have been reunited, and everyone is cheering and ready to leave forever. This seems like a good time to end the season and perhaps even the series (massive unanswered questions notwithstanding). But there are still 4–5 minutes left in the episode, just enough time for one final flashback revealing the episode's flashbacks have actually been flashforwards to a time when Jack and Kate have been rescued, and Jack desires to return to the island.
    • The season 5 finale seems to resolve both major plotlines (the hydrogen bomb and pilgrimage to Jacob) by the end of the episode, but cuts back to 1977 for one final, short scene in which a still-living Juliet whacks the bomb until it explodes.
    • There are three episodes that involve a sudden final flashback to a character uninvolved with the main centricity, usually revealing a plot twist. The first is season 2's "Dave," where a Libby flashback shows she was in the same mental ward as Hurley. The second is season 6's "Ab Aeterno," where a flashback shows the Man in Black conversing with Jacob in 1867 about the former's attempt to kill the latter. And the third is season 6's "Everybody Loves Hugo," where a Desmond flashsideways shows him intentionally hitting Locke with his car, then speeding off.
  • Twenty Four does this so frequently that it can be considered a mainstay of the series. Any time the good guys raid a location in which they suspect the Big Bad is hiding, you only have to check the episode number to know how the scene will end.
    • The sixth season plays right into this by having Jack stop the terrorists seven hours early. The plot then changes to focus on the Chinese holding Jack's assumed dead girlfriend hostage.
    • After spending twelve hours running around L.A. as a glorified errand boy, Jack kills Big Bad Ira Gaines midway through the first season (and halfway through the episode, to boot). The rest of the episode is spent reuniting with his family while CTU learns about a heretofore-unmentioned second assassin who has flown in to kill President Palmer.
    • Midway through season four, Jack and Paul Raines hole up in a sporting goods store and defeat a group of military commandoes. This is accomplished with twenty minutes left in the episode, leading people to suspect something's up. Then, the guy who hired the commandoes (who wasn't quite dead) shoots a supporting character, and the focus turns to saving one of two critically-injured people in CTU's medical wing.
    • Season seven did it again in episode ten... the master list of every government official on Dubaku's payroll has been found and safely delivered to the FBI. Of course, The Mole tries to crash the system and erase the file...only for Chloe to get it back. Since we hadn't yet hit the halfway point of the season, there has to be more...and there is, as the previews have a very confusing montage of people running, another terrorist attack and President Taylor almost(?) getting killed. Sorry, Jack, but it's only six p.m... what did you expect?
    • Most of the season finales fall under this:
      • In the final episode of season one, Jack kills Andre and Victor Drazen before the episode is half over, leading people to think that he's solved the main plotline. He gets to talk to his daughter, and promises that everything's alright...then, when he's driving back to his office, he gets the surveillance footage for Jamey Farrell's holding cell when she died earlier in the day, and realizes that Nina is the mole.
      • Jack kills Peter Kingsley at the end of season two (and the main plot regarding falsified audio recordings is solved)...but there's still twenty minutes left in the show, which means several cliffhangers are set up.
      • The first ten minutes of the season four finale are spent with Jack successfully stopping the terrorists and destroying the nuclear missile headed towards Los Angeles. Except there's still half-an-hour left in the show, which is spent detailing Jack faking his own death and going on the run.
    • President Logan is arrested in the season-five finale! And Jack even gets to make a phone call to Kim, who he hasn't talked to in...wait, why are there fifteen minutes left in this episode?
  • Nearly every episode of Law and Order is like this; if they don't have the wrong suspect in the beginning, then the case is quickly wrapped up only for something leading to the investigation of a more horrific or serious crime to appear, such as an episode where a simple open-shut case of a peeping tom pedophile reveals that one of his victims was also the victim of parental child abuse.
    • One episode of starts with the detectives investigating the robbery of a safe deposit box vault and the murder of a guard. This case is solved quickly, but amongst the loot recovered from the thieves is a gun used in a 30 year old murder that had been in one of the boxes. Cue segue into a new investigation.
    • There was also the time the perp was caught and plead out by about :20, only for McCoy to decide to go after the makers of the illegally modified pistol used to commit the crime.
    • There was the time there was a rash of serial killings of young teenaged black boys that looked like copycat killings of a white supremacist McCoy successfully prosecuted years ago. The detectives discover the killer is a black religious fanatic who confesses to everything...and reveals he was no copycat. He was the original serial killer all along. The white supremacist was innocent. The rest of the episode focuses on the mounting legal troubles McCoy faces for this blunder. It turns out his female assistant (and lover) at the time deliberately withheld evidence that would not only have cleared the white supremacist, but also pointed to the real killer.
    • One of the spin-off shows, SVU, has a habit of doing this in a bizarre way. Occasionally, the investigation of a sexual crime will uncover a bizarre and extensive Government Conspiracy worthy of Fox Mulder.
      • One of the best examples is an episode which starts off with a murder that is resolved in the first twenty minutes - then out of nowhere it's discovered that one of the possible suspects is not the father of who he thinks is his daughter. This thread goes on for a while and it ends with his arrest for murdering his wife so that he can keep his daughter - but there's still twenty minutes left. Turns out while Eliot was arresting the perp, his wife went into labor * and* got in a car crash...
  • Babylon 5 ends the major conflict that drove the show (the Shadow war) just six episodes into season four. The remainder of season four was mostly about resolving the secondary conflict of the show (President Clark's regime on Earth), and the entirety of season five consisted mainly of tying up loose ends.
    • The story had originally been planned with a five-season arc (though the Shadow war would have, even in the original plan, been wrapped up during season 4). Then, at the beginning of writing season 4, the creators were told that they were not going to get a fifth season, so they set about compressing the original plotline so they could wrap almost everything up by the end of season four (with the exception of the Centauri Prime arc, which would've been resolved in the canon novels). Then they discovered they were getting a fifth season after all on a different network, but by that time it was too late to rewrite. As a result, what would've been most of the first half of season 5 is compressed into 3 episodes at the end of season 4, and the arc with Byron's telepaths was stretched out over the broadcast fifth season's first half in order to fill the gaps.
    • It's also another remnant of the parallels between B5 and The Lord of the Rings - there's the entire "Scouring of the Shire" part after the Ring is destroyed, and there are quite a few similarities between that storyline and the rest of Season 4.
  • In Mathnet story, The Case of the Parking Meter Massacre, the culprit, played by celebrity guest Wayne Knight, was caught on Wednesday. Naturally, there was a copycat criminal out and about.
  • Happened on quite a number of occasions on American Gothic. The two most memorable would have to be "Resurrector", when after a morality tale of a radio talk-show host, his seemingly murdered wife, and Buck in one of his most despicable acts of Magnificent Bastardry, the interspersed attempts of Caleb to bring Merlyn's spirit back to him results in decidedly mixed results; and "The Buck Stops Here", where after the sheriff is killed and Caleb becomes a regular little Damien, nearly killing Gail and bringing the whole town, even Selena, under his thrall, we are treated to the last shot of Buck's eyes opening in his grave.
  • "Lay Down Your Burdens", the second season finale of Battlestar Galactica Reimagined. At the 55-minute mark everything seems returned to the status quo, even if Roslin had a rig an election for it. Then Gaeta uncovers the fraud, and the extended-length episode runs for another 30 minutes setting up the first story arc of season 3.
    • Played straight with freaking Revelations. They find Earth, huzzah! But there's still half a season left, and all is not joyous as it seems.
    • The cliffhanger version of this trope happens in "Kobol's Last Gleaming". Boomer discovers beyond all doubt that she's a Cylon, but blows up the basestar as ordered. It appears next season will be about how Boomer copes with this newfound knowledge. Instead her Cylon side forces the issue by shooting Adama twice in the chest.
  • In the Psych episode "Tuesday the 17th", it was clear something else was up when the mystery was solved at the half hour mark. The fact that the first part was a spoof of April Fools should have been a clue for what was coming next.
  • One episode of Joan of Arcadia has Joan and her friend Grace resolve their differences and then sit on the porch while the camera pulls away, a song plays, and the screen fades out. There was still twenty minutes left.
  • This happens so often in Chuck that it's almost become part of the usual plot formula.
    • The second season finale is particularly bad. The bad guy's been defeated, the wedding was ruined, the wedding was saved, everything's set up for the next season! And there's still another ten minutes to go.
  • Leverage does this every week. Their plan is working perfectly, then somewhere between the 20 minute mark and the 40 minute mark something goes awry and they have to improvise.
  • The title character of Castle, being a Dangerously Genre Savvy mystery writer, seems to be very good at spotting these moments.
    • He keeps digging in the pilot after the seemingly obvious suspect has been arrested because his writer's sensibilities are offended by the killer's identity being 'too easy' ("The reader would never buy it!"), and he's often quick to point out when he thinks a likely suspect is a Red Herring.
    • Done extremely effectively in one episode when, after the killer commits suicide, Castle is shown going over crime scene photos with about 5 minutes left in the episode, only to deduce that the body they found was Not Left Handed, the real killer faked his death, and Beckett's life is still in danger. Very effective if you didn't realize that this episode was the first half of a two-parter.
  • This trope is abused (like so many other tropes) in the Monty Python's Flying Circus skit "Secret Service Dentists".
  • Every season of Farscape ends on one of these, with the cliffhanger usually resolved in the first episode of the next season. Season Four's finale was especially flagrant, as it teased the viewer with the prospect of an actual happy ending in the Farscape universe before shattering that pipe dream.
  • Peep Show episodes almost invariably have a moment around the twenty-minute mark where, if the show ended there, everything would be fine. But of course It Gets Worse.
  • In The Amazing Race, this is used on the contestants themselves in Seasons 7, 8, 9, and 14. The teams get a clue telling them to go to mat and find Phil, only to have him tell them that the leg is not over, and hand them their next clue.
  • In order to save The Multiverse, Kamen Rider Decade was tasked with the mission of going over to 9 worlds of the Heisei Riders and helping the Riders there. Once he's finished with all 9 worlds, Decade and crew seemingly return to their home dimension. However, Decade soon learns that it's not over; not by a long shot. The dimension they returned to was not their home. Decade's Quest for Identity, which was his ulterior motive in this mission, still draws blank. There's Dai-Shocker waiting in the shadows for their Great Leader to return so that they can start their conquest. Finally, The Multiverse is still on the brink of destruction.
    • This happens again in Double. The duo finally defeat Ryubee Sonozaki and it seems that everything is coming to a close. Cut to Kazu carrying Wakana's body. The kicker? Shotaro even knows it's not the end due to them not finding Wakana's body.
  • In Prison Break, happens all the time, but the worse is the series finale when the gang are all cleared with twenty minutes to go. Michael and Sarah are walking down the beach, talking about their future, when Michael starts bleeding from the nose. The flash forward has him dead.
  • You can count on this happening two or three times on any Quantum Leap episode, as Al's suggestions for how to set things right wind up having worse consequences and Sam has to change something else.
  • In Power Rangers Operation Overdrive, every time they thought they'd found the next jewel, it turned out to only be the next clue, which led to the next, and the next, etc. Of course, the clues were also often powerful devices on their own.
  • White Collar: "Free Fall", Neal, in the belief that he had finally found his Love Interest Kate, storms into a hotel room to rescue her. She is not there.
  • In Power Rangers Wild Force The Nexus is destroyed, Master Org's ritual has (seemingly) failed and turned him to dust, and the last 2 orgs Jendrix and Toxica declare a truce and wander off for a road trip. Then Master Org comes back and systematically destroys their animal crystals thus depraving them of their zordswhich tangically unmakes their morphers, so they can't morphand the Animarium comes crashing back to Earthwhile his vines are taking over the city and his foot soldiers are attacking the people And this is only part 1 of the two parter. Thankfully our heroes restore their powers though sheer Heroic Willpower and proceed to curbstomb Master Org by an energy blast from about 40 billion revived animal crystals in the Duex Ex Machina of all endings.
  • Stargate SG-1 had a tendency to play this trope, notably in the search for the lost city of Atlantis, and the quest for the Holy Grail/Sangraal/Anti-Ori weapon. In the latter case, the team was actually presented with what they thought was the object, only to discover that it was a hologram.
  • In the Sherlock episode "A Study in Pink", John manages to track Sherlock and the killer to a college composed of two separate, almost identical buildings. After frantically running through one in an attempt to find the pair, he arrives in a room that looks exactly like the one they're actually in only to see that they're in the opposite building, paving the way for a Crowning Moment of Awesome when John shoots the killer. Yes, from the other building.
    • Additionally, in the final episode of the 2010 series, "The Great Game," Sherlock's infamous arch-nemesis Moriarty, having seemingly left Sherlock and John unharmed from a tense conflict involving explosives and a sniper, returns in the last minute of the episode, declaring "I'm so changeable!" as additional snipers are revealed. At this, Sherlock aims a handgun at the previously mentioned explosives, before the shot cuts to Black Screen of Death -such an iconic ending in the fandom that it's the page image.
  • In the penultimate episode of Once Upon a Time Season One, "An Apple Red as Blood", Snow White and friends successfully launched a daring rescue for Charming... only to find that her prince was in another castle.


Music

  • The Fake-Out Fade-Out is the music world's version of this. A famous example would be the one in "Strawberry Fields Forever" by The Beatles. Sometimes it's just a little postscript riff, like in "Wonderwall" by Oasis.
  • The Beatles' "Helter Skelter" also does this. Twice. Which turns into a Video Games example when songs containing one show up in Rock Band or Guitar Hero.
  • Used to superb effect in "Over The Hills And Far Away" by Led Zeppelin, as well as "Anne's Song" by Faith No More.
  • The video for Tupac Shakur's "Changes", the first song released after his death, does this very impactfully. For two verses Tupac raps about social issues and the problems of the black underclass over clips from his previous videos and from rare home videos. At the end of the second verse, we see a collage of video and audio clips from Tupac's life, while in the background Tupac speaks over a fading chorus. It ends with the collage resolving into a mosaic depicting Tupac's face, a fitting memorial to his life and work... and then the third verse starts up with the words, "And still I see no changes; Can't a brother get a little peace?"
  • A few years before Tupac's death, Oingo Boingo recorded a song called "Change" that glides to a comfortable ending after 15 minutes, only to return for the final verse and chorus.
  • Subverted in one version of the children's song "Be Kind To Your Fine Feathered Friends," which cuts off—much earlier than you'd expect it to—with the words "You may think that this is the end...and it is." The other version ends "You may think that this is the end...and it is, but there is another ending. This is it."
  • Could also be the 'hidden tracks' on some albums as well. Jay Z did this on his album The Blueprint, with the final song 'Blueprint (Momma Loves Me)' ending, then two more full songs, 'Lyrical Exercise' and 'Girls Girls Girls Remix' playing on the same song number of the CD.
  • Richard Strauss's "Also Sprach Zarathustra" has a fake ending somewhere about halfway through, where a thrilling double fugue culminates in the entire orchestra blasting out the opening theme in a seemingly triumphant manner, pipe organ and all. After a moment of silence, the orchestra resumes playing what it had been, only much more slowly and faintly. (The actual ending is quiet and deliberately anticlimactic.)
  • The Monty Python's Flying Circus song I'm So Worried has three verses that could be the last verse in succession, with the latter two being about the singer's concerns that he should have ended the song with the previous verse.
  • Stone Temple Pilots' Plush seems to end about 3/4 of the way through, for only about half a second, when it picks up again.
  • An alternate recording The Beach Boys made of "Help Me Rhonda" has the repetition of the refrain and the end with alternating stanzas fading out then slamming in at normal range on the ensuing stanzas.
  • The Mountain Goats have a song by the name "Thank You Mario, But Our Princess Is In Another Castle!", with a bit of a Perspective Flip - it's from Toad's viewpoint.


Professional Wrestling

  • Any time Money in the Bank is cashed in after the Champion had already won a hard-fought title match. Notable examples include Edge cashing in on John Cena after an Elimination Chamber, CM Punk cashing in on Jeff Hardy after a ladder match with Edge, and The Miz cashing in on Randy Orton after a title match with Wade Barrett. The last one is particularly notable because it happened on an episode of Raw and anyone who looked at the clock after Orton beat Barrett would have guessed that something like this would happen.
    • At Elimination Chamber 2010, Batista pulled this on John Cena after his grueling match by simply requesting an immediate title shot from Vince McMahon.
    • Averted at Money in the Bank 2011 by CM Punk, who kicked Alberto Del Rio in the head and fled the arena before Del Rio could cash in his contract following Punk's hard-fought WWE championship victory over John Cena.
    • A double example: in 2009, CM Punk attempted to cash in on an exhausted Edge, only for Umaga to storm the ring and give Punk a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.
  • Another instance, this time involving The Nexus. After months of tormenting WWE, attacking almost every single superstar on the roster, including The Undertaker, and even getting John Cena fired for a little while, leader Wade Barrett suffers a pretty decisive defeat from Cena, leading everyone to assume the group was done. However, two weeks later, CM Punk, one of the most talented, charismatic, but also one of the most ruthless wrestlers in WWE, decided to become Nexus' new leader after being fed up with Cena's Moral Dissonance. Uh oh.
  • Often, a wrestler will win a hard-fought match, only to be assaulted from behind by another wrestler whom they weren't feuding with (yet). For example, in 2011 TNA, Velvet Sky had just handily defeated Winter, Angelina Love, Jeff Jarrett, and Karen Jarrett. She had declared that she will put these rivalries behind her and get into the Knockouts Title hunt. She starts saluting the crowd and walking to the back... only to be assaulted by ODB, who hasn't been seen in about a year. A few weeks later, Velvet beats ODB in a street fight... only to be assaulted by Jackie Moore, who hadn't been seen for about two years.


Theater

  • The Merchant of Venice. Shylock has been defeated! The eponymous Merchant is saved! Mercy's quality avoids straining! Everything the audience cares about is over! Meanwhile, in Act Five...
  • This trope is the raison d'etre of the Sondheim musical Into the Woods. At the conclusion of the first act, all the subplots are resolved and every fairy tale character is literally singing Happy Ever After. After the intermission, of course, consequences of the first act unfold, and everything goes to hell.


Video Games

  • Super Mario Bros series:
    • This trope gets its name from the original game with Toad saying the well known line that actually goes: "Thank you Mario! But our Princess is in another castle!", forcing you to go through four more stages and seven more worlds.
    • Super Mario Bros 3: Parodied when the Princess herself says it as a joke.
    • Super Mario Advance 4: It was restored to the original Japanese line (albeit translated), which was just a generic "peace returns to this world" speech capping off with "The End!" rather than "Bye Bye!".
    • Super Mario Bros 3: the entire World 8 is this trope. Your original mission was to save the kings of seven different kingdoms from Bowser. You do that and you're supposed to think the game's over, only to find out that while you've been out saving kings, Bowser has taken the princess and you must travel to his world to save her.
    • The phrase was actually used in an early draft of the Super Mario Bros movie.
    • In New Super Mario Bros. Bowser Jr. actually drags Princess Peach from one castle to the next (which is subject to quite a bit of Fridge Logic of its own).
    • Super Mario Land had Mario rescue a fake princess after every boss, which quickly turned into a monster (based on the theme of the world) and ran off.
  • The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay has the eponymous character escape from parts of the game's also eponymous prison complex, every time seemingly ending the game, only for Riddick to be apprehended and thrown into a more heavily guarded block. Notably even after the player escapes from the last one (where the prisoners are stored in a cryonic state) the game still pulls this trope by throwing in a last Boss Battle.
    • The game also lampshades this during the first level/tutorial where Riddick manages to get away before he even enters the jail. The catch? He was dreaming.
    • Assault on Dark Athena features the entire Butcher Bay campaign (remade with 7th-gen technology) and has a gigantic Not So Fast Bucko by way of the ending leading directly into a new campaign of equal length to the original game.
  • Thamasa and the Floating Continent in Final Fantasy VI; however, this was before the era of multi-disc games, and the Floating Continent (a giant chunk of land ripped from the earth) just screams The Very Definitely Final Dungeon, so it is far less apparent... unless you actually went through the paper Feelies and discovered that there was a "World of Ruin" map included.
  • Okami has two false climactic dungeons: Orochi's Cave one third of the way through the game, and then Oni Island, at about roughly the two thirds point. While before you enter these areas the game heavily portrays them as being The Very Definitely Final Dungeon, once you're actually inside, they have a curiously lighthearted and unhurried atmosphere. The real final dungeon on the other hand is treated with the appropriate amount of melodrama and gravity.
  • Kingdom Hearts II:
    • Sora not only misses Kairi once (Destiny Island), but twice (Twilight Town). Although Third Time's the Charm (The World that Never Was).
    • You beat Xemnas in suitably epic fashion, albeit with relative ease, along with a good, long cutscene with characters ready to head home. Anyone who took a look at the OST would know that there's one more boss theme left...
  • The Tales (series) do this a lot.
    • The ending of the Journey of Salvation, the pact with Luna, the attack on the Tower of Salvation, and the foray into the Treant's Forest in Tales of Symphonia. Each time the characters are absolutely convinced that this battle will be their last, and each time they are utterly wrong. Of course, most of these occur in Disc 1, which is a dead giveaway that there's more to come.
    • After defeating Dhaos in Tales of Phantasia. Right at the point where the party members are saying their goodbyes and preparing to go home, having defeated the Big Bad, excitement happens.
    • Tales of Vesperia does not let you down in this area either. Interestingly enough, you can be sure that Alexei isn't the final boss, but not because of a lack of skills and equipment or because the world map is largely unexplored (quite the opposite for both), but because plotwise, there are still a ton of unanswered questions. You didn't really think they were just gonna forget about the Adephagos, didja? Or that Duke would ever be left unexplained?
    • Tales of Hearts initial plotline is retrieving several MacGuffins, scattered fragments of a main character's soul. When this is done, the actual plot suddenly bursts forth from it, and the hapless gamer finds that he has about 20 more hours of game to go. (As it should be; the Spirune arc wraps up around the 25-hour mark.)
    • Tales of Destiny doesn't disappoint either. So you've chased Lydon all around the world, finally cornering him and ending his plans. The Eye of Atamoni is secure beneath Darilsheid castle, the Swordians have gone back to sleep, and our hero says his goodbyes and returns to his tiny hometown. The world is safe once again, right? Cue the second half of the game.
    • Tales of the Abyss has it, too, in epic fashion. Despite parts of the world being unexplored, you might actually believe it's the final dungeon - it's the longest one in the game, or very nearly so, and the true Big Bad is waiting for you at the bottom, and you sure do (seem to) kill him at the end of the fight, followed by saving the world using the plan you've devised, changing the face of it forever. You've resolved the main plot so thoroughly, there's actually a month-long timeskip between that and the final section of the game.
  • The Photosphere in Wild ARMs 1.
  • The Lava Caves in Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean. Though rather obvious because the time to enter the dungeon comes not too long after a disc change.
    • In Baten Kaitos: Origins, this is done a little more faithfully. After defeating Verus, the party will begin to leave Tarazed when Wiseman shows up and uses Verus's body to turn into a giant griffon-like monster. This may or may not count, however considering it only happens if you went back in time and defeated Wiseman at Atria before fighting the final boss
  • This happens repeatedly in Shadow Hearts Covenant. So you've unsealed Yuri's Amon fusion, defeated Grigori Rasputin/Asmodeus and destroyed Idar Flamme, that means you've saved the world (again), right? Wrong, now Nicholai has fused with Astaroth and wants to destroy it. OK, so you've kicked Nicholai/Astaroth's ass, surely THIS time the world is safe? Wrong again, now Ouka's death has driven Kato over the edge and HE wants to destroy the world too. It was arguably one too many, as Kato made for a pretty unsatisfying end boss.
  • Chrono Trigger has several points like this, particularly the first battle with Magus and the Ocean Palace. On the other hand, if you've been Level Grinding like mad or are playing a New Game+, you can turn one of them into the real ending.
  • The Forge of Urath in Summoner.
  • The Troubleshooters game (Battle Mania in Japan) has a rare fake ending in a non-RPG, where the credits actually start rolling before the villain interrupts them; the real credits appear after the next level.
  • The first Time Crisis game sets up the main villain as Sherudo Garo, a knife-throwing, somewhat effeminate gentleman who has kidnapped The President's Daughter. Strangely you do battle with him in only the second act (of three). After killing him, you go to release the captive before realising she is now in the possession of Sherudo's right hand, Wild Dog, who you battle in the final confrontation.
  • Castlevania:
  • Rogue Galaxy, where the hero actually announces "This...will be our Final Battle!" before the boss fight against Mother...whoops! Another character gets to say the exact same line a few minutes later, as the three Goldfish Poop Gang villains and their Cool Ship get sucked into a pit of volatile magical lava stuff and emerge as The Demon Battleship.
  • The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess does this when you obtain the Fused Shadows, but then Zant comes along and mugs you. So you have to go on another quest to find yet another set of Mirror Shards, so that you can get them back.
  • Star Fox Adventures pulls it twice, though the second time isn't that far from the end. The first time, Fox figures that all there is to bringing the planetary chunks back together is... saving the queen's son. Yeah, right. Later, the placing of the four Spellstones does bring the planet back together long enough for him to prematurely declare the mission accomplished, only to find that it's not, and he discovers that those Spirits he's been collecting and releasing are actually important to the mission.
    • The original pulled this with both of the Venom Surface levels, where the boss you fought in space returns, goes down in a few hits, only to turn One-Winged Angel.
  • In the original Doom, in Episode 2, Mission 6, "Halls of the Damned", you go through a long corridor, up to a room with an "Exit" sign and a switch, that when you throw the switch the floor collapses into a room with a whole bunch of nasties; it was a trick to make you think it's the end of the level.
    • A much better example would be Episode 3's secret level "Warrens": it's an exact copy of the episode's first level, "Hell Keep", right down to weapon and monster placement, except significantly easier as you start with more than just the pistol. When you reach the end of the level, the teleporter doesn't bring you to the stat counter - it drops a bunch of walls, revealing new areas filled with new monsters - such as the Cyberdemon standing directly in front of you.
    • A similar case occurs in E 1 M 6 of Quake where you enter a dark door that looks like an exit, then the room lights up to reveal a Shambler.
    • In Quake IV, after destroying the Tetranode, the Makron shows up. You fight him for a bit, then he paralyzes you with his Dark Matter Gun and takes you to the Stroggification assembly line.
  • In Case 2 of Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney Trials and Tribulations, after you prove your client innocent of theft by proving that he was in another place at the time. Right after the verdict, it is found that at the same time as the theft, there was a murder exactly where you proved he was. At which point you then have to prove that the guy that you've proven as the real thief is actually the real murderer, despite the fact that he did indeed pull off both crimes, which happened at the same time. Phoenix understandably freaks out several times. A very memorable case.
    • Don't forget the first game. Despite a bit of interference, you manage to prove Edgeworth isn't the murderer... and then it turns out the whole trial was a Batman Gambit by Manfred von Karma to get Edgeworth to confess to his own father's murder 15 years ago.
  • In Jade Empire, you've worked your way up the command chain to discover that, instead of being a puppet controlled by Death's Hand, the Emperor is truly behind everything that's happened. You defeat the Emperor, rescuing Master Li, and then Master Li walks over to you, congratulates you on how far you've come, and kills you with a few well-placed punches, revealing the plot to be a Gambit Roulette. Cue the lengthy final chapter of the game.
  • Pulled off brilliantly in Dragon Quest VIII, with the battle against Dhoulmagus. Even though it obviously can't be the Final Boss fight due to the around half the map remaining unexplored, the game does such a good job of matching the feel of a genuine Final Boss battle (multiple forms, extreme difficulty and all) that that while you're fighting it's easy to forget it's not one. The dungeon you explore to get to him is also creepy enough to give the impression of a final dungeon as well.
    • Dragon Quest III does this as well. After defeating Baramos, returning to the king, and watching a celebration in your honor (this being a common ending theme for DQ games), Zoma suddenly nukes the partygoers and challenges you to come to his world. It's especially effective since your characters are quite powerful by this point, you've (most likely) explored the entire world map, and even have a means of flight.
  • In Pokémon Red and Blue, the dragon master Lance is set up as the final boss. He isn't. The true champion is Blue/Green/Gary/ Asshat whatever the heck you named him. In the sequel, both Lance and Blue are set up as the final boss at separate points, with Lance qualifying as a Disc One Final Boss as well. There is actually NO INDICATION Blue is NOT the final boss until you climb to the top of Mt. Silver, you see "......" on the screen, and you KNOW this is going to be epic. The true champion THIS time is Red, the player character from the original games, with the highest-leveled mons in the entire series. (Red briefly lost the "highest level" crown to the Sinnoh rival in Platinum, but regained the title in the remakes of Gold and Silver.)
    • In Ruby, Sapphire, Diamond, Pearl and especially Emerald and Platinum after you beat the game, you have a small island to explore. Also, if you beat the Champion 20 times in D/P/PL, your rival's Pokemon gain multiple levels, in Platinum even if he is the most leveled NPC in any Pokemon.
    • Due to Black & White being a semi-throwback to the original games, you once again defeat the Elite Four, climb the suitably epic ascent to the Champion to find... N (the antagonist) has defeated him with his new uber-dragon. He then raises a GIANT castle, forces you to catch a giant dragon, and fights you. It then happens AGAIN when Ghetsis takes over for the FINAL final boss fight. And then there's the whole rest of the game where you fight the real Champion, Cynthia (champion of Sinnoh) and Shigeki Morimoto, one of the developers. All of whom are much, MUCH stronger than you'll be after you beat the game.
    • Well, Nascour... who's facing "the humiliation of total domination" now, bitch? Hi, Mayor, as you can see, I have the situation under... wait, what?
    • Primal Dialga.
  • Gears of War does this. At the end of the third act (out of five), you plant the Resonator to map the Locust tunnels. And... it doesn't work. Luckily, the main character's dad has a complete map at his lab.
  • In Half-Life 2: Episode 1, you board a train out of the Citadel, having just completed a puzzle-level worthy of being a finale. You think you're out of the city... and the train is derailed by a very large explosion that catches up with you. You then have to fight your way out of the zombie-infested darkness with Alyx to reach the surface and evacuate with the other refugees.
  • In the Game Boy remake of Donkey Kong, the final world has Mario defeating Donkey Kong in a final battle, with dramatic music playing at the top of the tower...until DK falls off the tower in the cutscene, grows gigantic due to some Super Mushrooms and attempts to finish off Mario once and for all
  • Mega Man X Command Mission pulls this off VERY effectively. OK so you defeated the Big Bad who turned out to be a Well-Intentioned Extremist. And you've secured the MacGuffin. Time to go home. Wait... What the fu--? Why is our transport shooting at us?!! Our commanding officer turned on us?! WHAAAAAT?!!
  • Mega Man Battle Network 3. Okay, so we've got the super weapon and tracked down the Big Bad and defeated The Dragon... wait, what's Bass doing there? Craaaap.
  • In Mega Man 4-6, you have to go through one castle that has the fake villain. After that, you have to storm over to Dr. Wily's castle to defeat him. Worse in 6, because Mr. X is a poorly disguised Wily and you still need to go through two castles.
  • The World Ends With You. Possibly the most obvious example, because you have yet to understand the roles of just under half of the people on the box when the week ends.
  • Trauma Center does this with Episode 2-9, "Please Let Me Live". You open up the patient, suture a few incisions, and... experienced players restore vitals before they suture the last one. Because when you do, new lacerations burst into view. Meet Kyriaki, the first GUILT virus.
    • That scene may cause shouts of "IT'S A FREAKING PTERODACTYL."
  • At the start of Persona 3, you are told that you have "one year" to save the world. You get told that you can do this by defeating all of the Arcana Shadows. You manage this after seven months. Surely nothing can go wrong now.
    • Then this happens a few more times in Persona 4. The first two are easy to see coming (the random guy spying on Rise isn't the real murderer, and Mitsuo was just a copycat). But THEN if you realize that Namatame's Shadow is acting suspiciously and stop the others from throwing him into the TV it still turns out you haven't caught the right guy. And even after you catch the actual culprit, you can only get the True Ending if you invoke this trope during the ending sequence.
  • The fourth case of Touch Detective. You manage to figure out that it's not a murder case, manage to get all the evidence that points to this being true, convince Penelope that it's safe to come out of her room, start watching the credits, and Penelope barges in saying "the case isn't solved yet!". Did you really think that this case was only going to be one part long when all the others are 2 parts?
  • Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. You've nearly finished the Virtuous Mission and just need to get to the extraction point. Then one of your Mission Control characters betrays you and after a long cutscene, the opening credits run.
    • Well, Metal Gear Solid did this with the initial sneaking in, although it was much shorter; and Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty did this with the Tanker mission, although it was significantly longer. They've always been more of a 'pre-credit sequence' than a fake ending, though.
  • In Izuna Legend of the Unemployed Ninja, you'll believe you've won the game after defeating Takushiki (the leader of the six gods), as everyone you've helped out in the village thanks you one by one as you exit his dungeon. Only problem with that is Izuna's Grandboss still hasn't returned (in The Stinger, he's shown touching the same sacred crystal that Izuna saw outside the shrine at the beginning of the game), and there's one path leading out of the village that you haven't been able to visit up until that point. This path leads to a forty-floor Final Dungeon.
  • Lampshaded (along with everything else) by Mao in Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice, where he pulls of his wicked theft of the Hero title from the hapless Almaz, and apparently goes to face the final boss at the end of the first chapter.
    • Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten does it so often it becomes a Running Gag, in how episode 7 and everything after it is labeled as the "Final Episode", and the stakes just keep getting raised every single time it appears that the heroes have won. The game doesn't actually end before episode 10, which is aptly labeled as the "Real Final Episode".
  • In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, you've defeated Bowser and Kammy after beating Grodus, it must be over right? Not so fast, bucko! It seems that Grodus has survived and has taken Peach to a secret chamber! Things can't get any worse, right? WRONG!!
  • In Breakdown, a game by Namco for the Xbox, once you get to the penultimate boss and beat him, he gets right back up and kills you, placing you in a room you'd probably forgotten about. The twist that follows turns out to be the defining moment of the plot.
  • The Super Mario World hack "Super Mario Infinity" does this about FOUR times over the course of the game. First you're fighting through normal levels, and having to defeat Bowser. After getting through the final world, involving fighting him in every other level, it turns out Big Boo and Kamek were plotting against everyone including Bowser; cue another world with boss battles in every level, and a level with TWO 16 stage Marathon Bosses. After this, it still doesn't end, cue an airship and prison level. Then a Pit of 100 Trials. It's at this point some until now unknown great evil has been plotting to destroy reality, so when that plot point becomes known, there's another world to explore, complete with a 100 floor tower and ANOTHER Marathon Boss. Then you get a star in the box at the top of the screen, which allows you to return to the first level and fight a Bonus Boss... In case that was too lengthy, the ends of these videos show what I mean:
  • Gradius ReBirth, Stage 4. Hey, it's the boss of Stage 1, he's going down! Hey, why won't he die? And why is he charging in my direction and going into the background...oh crap.
  • After killing Nero Chaos, Shiki assumes that all the vampire problems are over. Arcueid points out the obvious fact that Nero didn't leave corpses and couldn't have been the vampire responsible for most of the incidents. And the savvy reader realizes the story is way too short otherwise.
  • Razing Storm, Stage 3. So you've sniped off all the Mooks, the Kill Sat has killed the Big Bad, and "Mission complete!" appears on the screen. Wait a minute, that was it? Nope, you now have more Mooks and a boss to deal with.
    • And near the end of Stage 4: One of your comrades, after all the enemies in the area have been destroyed, gloats "Ha ha, total annihilation!" Given that a "WAIT" prompt shows up over this bit of dialogue, this isn't fooling anyone: a few seconds later, the enemy's mothership-like carrier shows up from above.
  • Silent Hill 3 has a self-contained example in the Borley Haunted Mansion. After making her way through a series of nerve-wracking but mostly harmless rooms, Heather comes to a door marked "EXIT", and the narrator pipes up with "There's the exit." She steps through the door, and... "That was supposed to be the exit." Have fun running from the red mist of doom!
  • In an odd variation, some songs in Dance Dance Revolution do this. So, you think the song's over, huh? Well, don't relax yet, there's one last note waiting to ruin your score when you miss it!
  • Space Quest 3 tricked the player like this when you managed to free the two Guys from Andromeda (the pen name of the game's authors). The game gave you a large chunk of points (used to indicate how many of the puzzles you'd solved) and starts to congratulate you. Then the walls opened up the big, bad, evil guy and his troops are behind them. Your points are docked back off you and the game continues.
  • In the Wii A Boy and His Blob, the final boss comes at the end of the eighth level of the fourth world. Since all the other worlds up to that point had 10—for an advertised 40 main levels—it's clear that things over yet. Suddenly, the very first world gets two extra levels, and you get an Eleventh-Hour Superpower...
  • BioShock (series). Your "final confrontation" with Andrew Ryan only leads to discovering that "Atlas" is actually an alias for Frank Fontaine, and that you've been a mind-control Laser Guided Tykebomb the whole time. So now it's off to find the antidote for the mind-control and kill Fontaine.
  • Test Chamber 19 is not the end of Portal. Assuming you realize it and can react fast enough. The fact that the free demo "First Slice" featured more than half the Test Chambers might have been a tip-off.
  • In Portal 2, Chell and Wheatley successfully replace GLaDOS's head with Wheatley. Wheatley calls up the escape elevator for Chell, she gets in, and the elevator starts rising. Guess what happens next?

Wheatley: I can't get over how small you are, but I'm HUGE! *Starts laughing, which turns into evil laughing after a few seconds*

  • Scratches: So you finished crafting the sacred totem, you then used it to confront the cursed mask and exorcise the curse from the mansion, your work here is done, let's leave this place... Wait, what's that sound?
  • Happens many times in the Resident Evil and Dino Crisis series. If you are escaping by helicopter, train, or plane, it will get shot down (Dino Crisis, Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, and Resident Evil 4), attacked by mutants (Resident Evil 2), or redirected to the enemy base (Resident Evil Code: Veronica).
  • Done twice in Cave Story. The first time's highly obvious; you've been sent to the Sand Zone to stop the Doctor getting his hands on the Red Flowers. Of course, You Are Too Late. You immediately get fed a Climax Boss when the Doctor decides to test out the Red Flowers on Toroko, and then get dumped in the Labyrinth. After slogging through the Labyrinth and picking up exposition along the way, you find the heart of the island, which The Obi-Wan has told you to destroy. You defeat it in battle... only for the Big Bad to show up and save it before it explodes, and then teleport out leaving you in a flooded room with no way out. Crap.
  • Red Dead Redemption: The end of the New Austin missions, Mexico missions, and West Elizabeth missions are all made out to be the end of the game, so when the real ending does come it's quite surprising.
  • Dragon Age: The PC arrives at the fortress of Ostagar, meets the king and is told that an epic final battle is on the cards. Sure, thinks the player, who's done less than an hour's play in a BioWare game, final battle, right... Of course the battle is a slaughter due to a betrayal and things get a lot harder.
  • In Suikoden V, you kill Gizel Godwin and liberate Sol Falena. But since the game doesn't seem to be ready to end right away, what else could there be? Marscal Godwin stole the Sun Rune, and has fled to a temple where he is going to use it to melt a glacier, flooding the Feitas River. Better go take care of that. It figures that there would have to be a Nintendo Hard boss battle before the end.
  • In Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu, after you've beaten the first loop, you're given the possibility to go through a second loop. After doing that, you see your Battle Unit returning to its mother ship and flying through the Time Travel Gate while the Credits Song is playing. Cue the warning of an incoming unknown threat. And then suddenly a giant laser beam appears that destroys your mother ship shortly after you managed to escape with your own battle unit. Guess what that was. Right, it's General Longhena, sitting in his Hibachi unit, ready to kick your ass. He will!!!
  • In Advent Rising, you think you've won the game, cue credits, and then another boss fight.
  • Happens in Perfect Dark, after you've blown up the undersea superweapon and saved the world. Time to put on your best dress and meet the President! Whoops, change of plans... time to defend your headquarters against a surprise invasion, get kidnapped, and single-handedly defeat a warlike alien race on its own planet.
  • Happens in World of Warcraft in the Trial of the Crusader raid, where the Lich King crashes your victory ceremony to introduce you to the True Final Boss. An Interface Spoiler, combined with most raid leaders' insistence on a Walkthrough for first-timers, makes it a case of It Was His Sled.
    • In the Twilight Highlands Deathwing engages in personal combat with Alexstrasza which results in the two of them tumbling to the earth. You accompany her son down to where they landed to find a badly wounded Alexstrasza who declares that Deathwing is dead, moments before he rises from where he fell. Fortunately, he is also wounded and retreats before restarting the fight.
  • In Left 4 Dead campaign The Sacrifice, you activate the generators and lower the bridge, allowing you to escape from the undead hordes unscathed...right? Wrong, the bridge stops short and somebody has to restart the generator, sacrificing himself to allow the others to escape.
    • The custom campaign "I Hate Mountains" does this on a somewhat larger scale. The second level is engineered specifically to look like a finale stage: relatively short length, a defensible location chock full of items, and a means of calling for help. But after you summon the helicopter and run all the way from the top of the mansion to the helipad, the zombies crash the chopper. No nice clean endings here!
  • Happens in Baldurs Gate 2. You defeat the Big Bad and everything is fine and dandy, right? Wrongo. Because he's got a chunk of your soul inside him he drags you down to hell with him.
  • In the obscure NES game Mendel Palace, after clearing all of the doll houses and 9 of the eponymous palace's levels, you are about to face off with the witch...only for her to whisk you off into another palace in the sky.
  • In Bayonetta - Balder's been killed, Cereza's been taken back to her own time, and Luka's alive, so everything's back to normal, right? Nope! Turns out Balder wanted the older Cereza - Bayonetta herself - to recover her old memories through caring for her younger self, so that she could take her place as the so-called Left Eye of Jubileus herself! But then Jeanne shows up, freed of Balder's mind control, and frees Bayonetta so that she can fight Jubileus, and later helps destroy the god's corpse so it can't still destroy Earth in death.
  • In Fallout: New Vegas, you spend the first half of the game tracking down the man who shot you and stole the package you were supposed to deliver to Mr House. But when you finally accomplish this, the brewing conflict between the NCR, Caesar's Legion, House and the mysterious Yes Man comes to a head, and you become caught in the middle of it due to that Platinum Chip you just recovered. Whose side are you on?
  • Golden Sun: The Lost Age pulls this one for the final boss battle with the Doom Dragon. Each of its forms has its own hitpoint meter and the hitpoint meter decides how summon damage works, so it's the only enemy in the series, including Memetic Badass Bonus Boss Dullahan, that cannot be killed by a "summon rush" (using all the highest-power summons you can, all at once). Instead, your summons just took out the (relatively easy) first form, so now it can start using the big attacks... and you ran yourself fresh out of support Djinn for those summons, so everybody in the party is now at minimal stats for their level, and probably in their horribly weak default classes to boot. And that's just the beginning...
  • In Dragon Slayer, after defeating the dragon, the remaining task of carrying the four crowns it was guarding back to your home should be simple. But it isn't: ghosts immediately scatter the crowns all over the dungeon, and your home is now surrounded by Mook Makers.
  • Even Limbo pulls this off. A decent way through the game, you find yourself emerging from an industrial factory area into a little forest with a treehouse and the girl the protagonist is looking for—but then a Brain Slug hops onto your head and forces you to run the other way. If you get the slug off your head and run back, the treehouse and forest aren't there any more... (and you might have guessed the game wasn't going to end yet if you noticed the chapter archive for the various areas).
  • In Catherine, throughout the entire game Vincent was kept being told that the nightmare sequences will last 8-days and after that he will be free if he survives. He was given freedom and the plot seems to be resolved (even if the ending seems to be less than ideal), until the Plot Twist arrives and this time he voluntarily gets the nightmare for one final night which is the final stage.
  • Tales of Monkey Island Chapter 4: The Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood seems to wrap everything up...until you realize there's a fifth chapter. It involves getting killed and wandering around the afterlife which includes several rehashed elements disguised as portals. Naturally, you have to enter the real world, return to your body and face the Big Bad again at the end.
  • Although The Reconstruction doesn't actually wrap everything up when the twist is pulled, it looks like it's on a fast track towards doing so. However, just when it looks like you're about to have some climactic final boss fight and Save the World, Qualstio screams in horror as he finds that the Watchers have all been slaughtered. Also, you failed to stop Donz from activating the pillars, so civilization has been nearly wiped out. So, instead of going along with Fell's advice, the rest of the game revolves around stopping the Big Bad and trying to reconstruct civilization.
  • The first act of Winback has you attempting to access an express elevator to the Elaborate Underground Base, but one of the bosses blows it up, forcing you to take a much longer route.
  • After defeating the initial Big Bad in Red Faction II, your CO declares himself dictator, becoming the new Big Bad.
  • Heavy Weapon pulls one off after you defeat the "final stage". Your tank driver is about to celebrate the defeat of the Red Star forces, but then he gets a transmission showing that the first 9 bosses were a diversion and that the enemy had amassed an army 10 times greater. Cue the first 9 stages again, except with tougher enemies...
  • Braid has this message at the end of every world except for the last one, where it turns out that the princess was running away from you all along. Played with in World 4, where time advances when your character walks towards the right side of the screen, reverses when you walk to the left, and freezes when you stand still, causing the message to end up "Sorry, but the princess is in another... hey, where are you going?"
  • Commander Keen IV requires the player to rescue eight Gnosticene Elders. One level, the Pyramid of the Forbidden, is much more difficult than any other level, and it turns out that the person you rescue at the end is merely a janitor, thus making the level a Bonus Dungeon of sorts.
    • That would have been nice to know before-hand, since the only way back to the main part of the map is to meet said Janitor. Can't sleep, blue guys will fucking melt me...
  • Castle Crashers by The Behemoth occasionally does this. You'll chase down the bad guys dragging the princesses along, and go through several bosses before finally beating the end-level boss to fight for one princess while the others escape to be rescued another level.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
    • |Sonic the Hedgehog 2006: "It looks like the Princess was moved to another location." Really?
    • Sonic Unleashed: "Oh yay, I put all the continents together using the Chaos Emeralds except for one of them! Let's seal that last one-" (Dark Gaia becomes fully powered.) "Aw fu-!"
    • Sonic and the Black Knight, too. Complete with ending credits before it's revealed that the "Princess" has been in another castle all along.
  • Agarest Senki: If you think killing the guy who started the mess was going to be the finish line, you're wrong.
  • In Modern Warfare 2, it looks like Task Force 141, after heavy losses and a mad dash from Makarov's safehouse, are about to secure the intelligence on Makarov which will spell the end of his entire operation. They reach the extraction point, where General Shepherd and a small army of his troops are ready to evacuate them. Then Shepherd shoots Roach and Ghost to cover up what happened, dumps them in a pit, and sets them on fire. The game continues from there, with Price and Soap setting out to hunt down and kill Shepherd.
  • In Vigilante, the hero must rescue his girlfriend from a street gang called the "Skinheads". Whenever a boss is fought, the truck holding her captive is right there, but every time the boss is defeated, it drives off, and the hero must continue to the next stage.
  • The Kirby series, on occasion:
    • Kirby's Adventure: All the pieces of the Star Rod have been retrieved and King Dedede's been defeated! Now Kirby will go to the Fountain of Dreams and restore everyone's dreams, and I'll get to see the happy ending! What the? "Level 8"? How can there be a..? Uh-oh.
    • Done again in Kirby's Return to Dream Land. Kirby and company retrieve the broken parts of the Lor Starcutter in the span of five worlds. Then Magolor takes them to Planet Halcandra, where they must retrieve the Master Crown. Cue Worlds 6 and 7.
  • One quest in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has the player traipses deep within an undead-infested tomb to retrieve the legendary Horn of Jurgen Windcaller. At the end, you finally reach the coffin itself, to discover nothing more than a note from 'a friend' telling you they've already taken the Horn, and want you to meet them.
    • Later on the main quest you learn the Dragonrend shout to defeat Alduin, find an Elder Scroll to summon him and engage him in an epic battle atop the Throat of the World. Great you just beat him! Oh wait he flew away and it turns out he can only be defeated in Sovngarde.
  • In No More Heroes: It seems like you're finally the number one assassin; finally defeating everyone else. I guess it's time to use the potty... Then before you know it An assassin busts in and cuts your head off. Unless you get the good ending, where you have to fight your brother. And he can instantly kill you. I wonder how many you'll have to fight Jeane.
  • The Steam version of Eversion references this trope with its "The Princess Is In Another Castle" achievement which you get if you complete Stage 7 without getting all the gems, to make clear that this isn't the game's true ending. It might also be a reference to this popular Eversion fanart (link has spoilers).
  • Batman: Arkham City: You've found the MacGuffin!--oh, damn, the Joker stole it. Repeat.
  • One in the second Fantasy Quest game takes the form of the actual princesses being in a different castle.
  • "But is the level over?"
  • This trope is more or less invoked at the end of every level in Word Tower except the last level which is more of a Twist Ending.
  • Streets of Rage 3: You're going to defeat Mr. X and it's only the fifth level! Oh, it was Actually a Doombot and you have to keep going (well the latter isn't surprising). Unless you're playing on the lowest difficulty, in which case you get Easy Mode Mockery.
  • In the NES Monster in My Pocket game, you defeat Warlock and then watch TV as peace has been restored. Then he shows up again, providing the Victory Fakeout quote.
  • Ghosts N Goblins the quote provider. After defeating the Final Boss it turns out the battle was "a trap devised by Satan". The player is then forced to replay the entire game on a higher difficulty level before finally reaching the genuine final battle.

Web Comics

  • Invoked in the 2005 installment of the annually-published Platypus Comix story "Keiki's Huge Christmas Epic." While trying to help Andrea escape government officials wanting to take advantage of her wish-granting powers, Beefer asks Keiki if they'll get to resolve the story "this year". Keiki, suspecting they'll have to add a chapter the following year, simply asks, "What do you think?" Indeed, on the very next page, Andrea gets trapped, and tries to escape by wishing she and her friends were the President (sic) of the United States, creating yet another Cliff Hanger.
  • This Collar 6 strip.
  • In the "To Thine Own Self" arc of General Protection Fault, the alliance between GPF, the UGA and La Résistance of the Nega-Verse manages to capture Emperor Nicholas, Duchess Ki and General Duncan, as well as freeing the captured Nick. At that moment, the aliens with whom Nicholas had been fighting a Hopeless War attack, and the heroes discover that they are unable to use the Mutex to get home or contact the people in their dimension.
  • The Order of the Stick teaches us that people should not trust instructions given by a Jerkass to a member of their group that they didn't get along with in the first place. It turned out that the coordinates Girard gave Soon for the location of his gate turned out to be a random spot in the middle of the world's largest desert. Because he didn't trust him. The Order of the Stick is now back to square ZERO because not only do they have no idea where to go, but also because before they at least had the Sapphire Guard to fall back on for information.
  • Nerf NOW!! has Bowser falling for this. And an improved version later.

Web Original


Western Animation

  • Hey Arnold!, "Phoebe's Little Problem": The bit with Phoebe's teacher talking to her seems to have been written with this trope in mind. For a moment it seems that he's just talked her back into returning to school... until he accidentally makes a Freudian Slip and says "fart" when he meant to say "Let's make a brand new start".
  • The Simpsons:
    • There's a classic Lampshade Hanging on this in the "Homer and Apu" episode as, almost exactly halfway through the episode, Homer comments that everything has wrapped up "much quicker than usual." Cut to Apu (who's been fired from the Kwik-e-Mart) lamenting that he wants his job back.
    • In the episode "Brawl in the Family," the plot (a social worker being assigned to teach the family how to cooperate) appears to be resolved halfway through the episode, prompting Lisa to almost break the fourth wall by suggesting that now the family's getting along so well, this may be the "end of our series...of events". Then Homer's and Ned's Vegas wives from a previous episode turn up...
  • Sonic Sat AM, "The Doomsday Project", has a season-ending Cliff Hanger version. You see that the main characters have defeated Robotnik, and are celebrating... and then you see that Robotnik's nephew Snively has a new mystery villain. It ended up being the final episode, so the new mystery villain remained that way. The writers said it was intended to be Naugus, however.
  • Totally Spies!, "A Spy Is Born", has a similar Cliff Hanger. You see that the girls have captured a rogue filmmaker, and that he's been put on a plane... and then you see in the final scene that he's escaped and captured Alex. Cue part two of the season finale.
  • In Avatar: The Last Airbender
    • In "The Earth King", a couple of minutes before the end of the episode everything seems to be going well. The Earth King has granted his support for the invasion, the Evil Chancellor has been imprisoned, Sokka is about to meet his father for the first time in two years, Toph's just heard her own parents are in town and are willing to forgive her for running away, and the Kyoshi Warriors are on their way. Sokka, rather happily, announces "Everything is going to work out perfectly." Within the next minute and a half, it's revealed Dai Li agents are still taking orders from Long Feng. The "Kyoshi Warriors" are actually the Quirky Miniboss Squad in disguise, lead by Azula, and they now have the complete trust of the Earth King. Oh yeah, and the thing with Toph's parents was actually a trap set by people trying to kidnap her.
    • When Aang goes to the Royal Palace to fight the Fire Lord, he isn't there. When they go to the underground bunker, the Fire Lord's chamber, surprise! He still isn't there. Zuko finds and confronts him, though.
  • Jumanji did this a lot. Anytime Judy and Pete got out of the board game with more than a few minutes left it meant one of a few things 1) Pete/Judy did something stupid/unethical and will spend the rest of the episode having to fix it 2) Something bad is going to happen
  • Freakazoid! hilariously exaggerates this trope when an episode appears to be concluded in under two minutes. The show then cuts to a Warner Bros. board meeting:

Steven Spielberg: I don't get this. What is this? Dexter gets eaten, then fade out? The end? Where's Freakazoid?
Man at meeting: Well, he's not in this episode.
Steven Spielberg: Not in it? He's the star of the show. What are you thinking?
Second Man: Well, we were thinking of maybe ending the episode early today.
Woman at meeting: And showing some Animaniacs reruns.
Steven Spielberg: Oh. I like that.

Followed by the Animaniacs opening theme. Spielberg then has a change of heart and decides that the preceding segment was just a dream.
  • The second season finale of Transformers Animated seemed like it was going this way. Decepticons defeated, day saved, Sumdac rescued, status quo restored...and then Sari is revealed to be cybernetic. Roll credits (and bickering).
  • The episode "Over the Moon" of The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack had Flapjack and Captain K'Nuckles see and nearly touch Candied Island...but since it wasn't the Grand Finale, the moon's gravitational pull grabbed them back and they were forced to watch the sugar-coated island float off into the distance. At least Flap was able to taste it...
  • There was an episode of Garfield and Friends where Garfield cost the mailman his job. Garfield looks at the ex-mailman, who is sitting on the sidewalk and crying, and says "Gee, what a sad way to end a cartoon." and walks off. A U.S. Acres cartoon seems to start, but Garfield interrupts it and says "Did you really think we'd end it that way?" and the cartoon continues to show Garfield getting the mailman his job back.
  • The season two finale of Hot Wheels Battle Force 5 has all the Big Bads defeated, the Red and Blue Sentients making peace, and the eons old interdimensional war has come to an end...then Rawkus reveals that the Ancient Ones have awakened and the battle is far from over.
  • The My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic episode "Applebuck Season" has a great example. Applejack, stubbornly refusing help with the eponymous Applebuck Season, proudly shows off that's she's harvested the whole crop by herself. Only for her injured brother, Big Macintosh to point out, she hasn't even finished half. She finally collapses from exhaustion after the revelation.


Real Life

  • When Napoleon invaded Russia, he made it all the way to Moscow and conquered the city with no major resistance, and expected the war to be over and the Russians to surrender. However neither the Tsar nor most of the cities population and resources where there and the Russians didn't even dream of giving up. Faced with the onset of winter and exhausted troops, Napoleon had no choice to return to France, as continuing the war was out of the question.
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