That's All, Folks!

Now g-g-g-g-g-go home.

"That's all, folks!"

In a nutshell, this is telling the audience the show is truly over. They can either wait for the next attraction or go home if that was the final one.

Often presented as The Stinger, but other times it's a stock message.

If they do it often enough, it's an Every Episode Ending or Couch Gag. In modern times, Vanity Plates can serve the purpose.

Named for the line at the end of Looney Tunes shorts, that at some point was given to Porky Pig to say. (Which is why most usage of this particular line is rendered "Th-th-that's all, folks!")

See also The End and Game Over Man.

As an Ending Trope, Spoilers ahead may be unmarked. Beware.

Examples of That's All, Folks! include:

Anime

  • The ending theme for Nerima Daikon Brothers is basically summed up as "Yeah, it matters to our characters, but we're just actors. Thanks for buying the DVD so we can get beer. Now watch the next episode!" You can hear the dub version here.
  • The last episode of SD Gundam Force has one of these. It first seems like another Zako Zako Hour, only this one is hosted by the titular Gundam Force. They give their thanks for watching the series to the very end, followed by a curtain call of every character who ever appeared.

Grappler: We're going to...
Destroyer: ...last...
Zapper: ...Forever!

  • The Japanese dub for the final episode of Transformers Animated had the show's entire cast sing the opening theme, and cheering after the song is over.

Film

  • Kiss Kiss Bang Bang: The characters do this and even apologize for saying fuck so much.
  • Ferris Bueller's Day Off has the title character emerging from the shower after the end credits, looking at the audience. "You're still here? It's over! Go home."
    • Considering people were lured to stay through the credits because of Rooney's bus ride sequence, it can be considered a dirty trick on John Hughes' part.
    • The same footage of Ferris Bueller was used at the end of She's Having A Baby.
  • Bob Hope did pretty much the same thing in one of his movies.
  • Mr. Bean does this at the end of his first film.
  • The Finnish film Kummeli Stories used this as an elaborate pseudo-Brick Joke: About halfway through the movie, a topless woman walks into the scene for no reason other than the fact that the movie wouldn't be complete without a pair of naked breasts, with the other characters promising "more titties after the credits". This continues into the actual credits, with "more titties after the credits" shown once or twice as a reminder... and after the credits finally finish, another character shows up, scolds the audience for being a bunch of perverts, and tells them to go home.
  • At the end of The Muppet Movie, Animal tells the audience to "Go home! Go home! Bye, bye!"
  • At the end of Looney Tunes: Back in Action, Porky Pig attempts to deliver his famous catchphrase. Unfortunately for him, his stutter gets even worse than normal and after the lights go out he stops trying and, in an irritated tone, tells the audience to "Just go home, folks!"
  • Who Framed Roger Rabbit?? ended with Porky saying his line, followed by Tinkerbell blanking the screen with her wand, Disneyland-style.
  • Also done after the end credits in Space Jam when Bugs Bunny says the line. Porky Pig shows up and protesting Bugs, then Daffy Duck shows up saying it his way, then the five aliens pushed Daffy away and saying the line, and finally, Michael Jordan pushes up the curtain saying, "Can I go home now?"
  • Daffy Duck in Gremlins 2: "You're still here? Don't you people have homes?"
  • Mike & the Bots returning after the final scene to actually riff on the credits of THEIR OWN MOVIE during the end credits of Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie." Example: Crow - "Since we're thanking the whole entire world, I would like to thank this guy I know named Earl...thank you, Earl."
  • Get Him to The Greek featured the disembodied head of Sergio Roma saying, "Go home. Get the fuck outta this theater. Seriously."
  • The Movie of The Producers musical has a brief additional song at the end of the credits. Everybody (including Mel Brooks) tells you goodbye and get out.
  • Scott Pilgrim ends after the credits with a "The End" and sprite of Scott from the game jumping in and busting up the text.
  • Kangaroo Jack parodied this at the end, with the title character appearing in the Looney Tunes bullseye, stammering "T-th-th-that's all, blokes!"
  • Deadpool parodied Ferris Bueller with the title character appearing in a similar hallway wearing a similar robe to inform the audience that the movie was over and they weren't going to get a standard Marvel Cinematic Universe Stinger with "Sam Jackson in a saucy leather number", before singing a bit of Yello's iconic "Oh Yeah".

Live Action TV

"Hey Clavis! Wake up, the show's over."
"Oh yeah, kick it!"

[Shot of seashore with waves breaking on beach. John Cleese walks on screen wearing an old Spanish soldier's costume]
Cleese: Um, I'm sorry about the ... the, er, pause, only I'm afraid the show is a couple of minutes short this week. You know, sometimes the shows aren't really quite as er, long as they ought to be. [He looks around] Beautiful, isn't it. [He walks out of shot. Long pause - he walks back] Look there's not really a great deal of point in your, sort of hanging on at your end, because I'm afraid there aren't any more jokes or anything. [Walks out of shot. Scene continues for a while.]

  • From Just for Laughs: "MUMMY, IT'S OVER~!"
  • The Carol Burnett Show Once an Episode:

I'm so glad we had this time together
Just to have a laugh or sing a song
Seems we just get started and before you know it
Comes the time we have to say So Long. Goodnight everybody.

  • Saturday Night Live almost always ends with the cast on the stage waving goodbye as the Guest Host thanks the cast, musical guest, etc.
  • Mickey Mouse Club had the "Now it's time to say goodbye to all our company" variation of its opening theme.
  • Roundhouse: "Reprise the theme song and roll the ending credits!"
  • Nearly every episode of Top Gear ends with Jeremy Clarkson saying "And on that bombshell, it is time to end it" or a variant thereof.
  • The M*A*S*H episode "The Nurses": Klinger says this after the home movie of Frank's wedding runs out.
  • The Vanity Plate for Ronald Moore's company for Battlestar Galactica Reimagined. Each one was different and usually wacky and violent, which resulted in a gradually increasing case of Mood Whiplash as the series progressed.
  • The final episode of Dinosaurs: "This is Howard Handupme signing off for the very last time. Goodnight... And goodbye..."
  • One episode of the Mary Tyler Moore Show actually ended with Mary saying "Th-th-th-th-th-th-that's all, folks!"

Music

  • "Elvis has left the building."
  • The Beatles' Let It Be was the last album the group released, and John's final quip "I'd just like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves and hope we pass the audition" would certainly be bittersweet. But since Abbey Road was the last the group recorded, that distinction would go to the last line of "The End":

And in the end,
The love you take
Is equal to the love you make.

  • Paul McCartney has done this in recent concerts - in one he held at Abbey Road (which might air on a PBS station near you), he wrote a song in front of the audience, and the lyrics included "That's all for now! You've got to go home!" (Done very sweetly and melodically.) Since Paul recently has been known to try to continue concerts after the mike has been turned off, a formalized goodbye is necessary.
  • An ironic example by the band Genesis "That's All". The song title is the final lyrics and the rest is instrumental until it fades out.
  • Unusual example: the final song of the Type O Negative album October Rust cuts off abruptly (after 10 minutes of epicness) and then the lead singer says "Well, that's about it. That's all we have. I hope it wasn't too disappointing. We will see you on tour. Until then, take it easy."
  • Big & Rich's debut album Horse of a Different Color included a nearly minute-long goodbye after the last song which was obviously unscripted.
  • Eric Idle and Neil Innes' "Rutland Weekend Times" has an instrumentalless finale which includes this couplet:

[The budget] is how much we've got to make you bleeders smile
And we've went and overspent it by a mile

    • An alternate version has this couplet:

...We've overspent our budget, could not have
Now there's nothing left to make you buggers laugh.

  • Joseph Haydn's Symphony No. 45 is known as the "Farewell" Symphony - he and his musicians were kept at Prince Nikolaus Esterházy's summer palace much longer than expected, so at the end of the last movement, each musician stopped playing and left the stage, snuffing out their candle, until there were two violinists left. The prince got the hint and let them go the next day.
  • Sesame Street sing-along or play-along cassettes from the 1980s invariably ended with a stern male narrator announcing: "The tape is over. Please press the STOP button. Push it now." If you still hadn't pushed it after that, you got Oscar the Grouch sarcastically yelling: "WILL YOU PUSH IT NOW ALREADY?!"
  • Blue Oyster Cult: The song "Shooting Shark" ends with, "Fourth time round is the last time round; I have nothing else to say." Likely a subversion as this song is about repeatedly breaking up and getting back together.
  • A cappella novelty band Instant Sunshine had a song called Fleeting Time Now Bids Us Go, a song about how they had to stop singing now. The joke was that it slowly built to a grand chorus, after which one of the singers didn't get the hint and kept going.

Newspaper Comics

Oral Tradition

  • Armenian folk tales almost always end with some variant on the phrase "Three apples fell from heaven; one for the storyteller, one for the listener, and one for whoever pays good attention."

Radio

Andrew Timothy (Announcer, to audience): Well, the recording is all right, so thank you for coming, ladies and gentlemen, and goodnight.
Spike Milligan (performer): Now get out!

    • NB the reference to the recording being OK might seem paradoxical because they'd have to stop the tape in order to check it, but a second recording was made for transcription purposes and that's where the end tag came from.

Theater

  • The lyrics to the last song in The Producers (as mentioned above) can be summarized as, "The show's over, leave!"
  • The Genre Savvy cast of Urinetown: "That was our show!"
  • Mass: "The Mass is ended. Go in peace." (This is how the actual Catholic Mass usually ends.)
  • Every version of Forbidden Broadway has ended with one of these, some longer than others.
  • At the end of Cabaret, the Emcee (who introduced the show with "Willkommen -- Bienvenue -- Welcome") sings, "Auf wiedersehn! À bientôt!" The implied last word, "Goodbye!", is never sung (but sometimes spoken as he takes his final bow).
  • The endings of the first two Bottom Live stage shows used a large title card: "THAT'S IT. FUCK OFF."
  • The Skin of Our Teeth ends with Sabina, after repeating part of her opening speech, telling the audience to go home.
  • "Le commedia es finita!"
  • When Monty Python's Flying Circus played the Hollywood Bowl, they ended with a card on the big screen reading "THE END". After a few seconds, this was replaced with one reading "Now piss off!"

Video Games

  • Cruelly used at the end of Sly 2. After the credits roll, the player is told, "Well. That's it. You've seen everything. You win. Go outside." What's cruel about this is the game ended with quite the Bittersweet Ending, with Bentley crippled, Murray's van lost, and the gang disbanded.
  • The Secret of Monkey Island ends with a message telling the player to turn off the computer and go to sleep. The Video Game Remake instead says Guybrush Threepwood Will Return.
    • The original version of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge ends with a (very) long list of suggestions for what to do now that you've completed the game.
      • Escape from Monkey Island did this again by showing an error message after the credits, telling the player to stop slacking off and get back to work. This was eventually removed via a patch, because anyone playing the game in the first place would be there to play, not to work.
  • Final Fantasy does this with The End screen. A no-brainer usually, really, but with the series' tendecy to hide extra endings after the initial ending cutscene and credits, The End screen is the only consistently sure way to tell that it's really safe to turn the game off without the fear of missing something.
    • Even then, it's not a sure thing. Some of them play a version of the Prelude (you know, that theme with the up-and-down arpeggios) a minute or so after the music stops and "The End" appears, a theme which can't be heard at any other point. Most people miss it unless they happen to leave the game running.
  • "Thank a-you so a-much for-a playing my game!"
  • Just before the prompt to save New Game+ data, both Persona 3 and Persona 4 put the word "Fin" on the last freeze frame, Aigis holding the MC's dying body in 3 and the main character looking at a picture of him and his friends in 4.
  • The shower scene at the end of Tomb Raider 2.

Lara: Don't you think you've seen enough? *shoots the player with a shotgun*


Web Original


Western Animation

  • Again, Porky Pig is the Trope Namer, even though Bosko the Talk Ink Kid by all accounts beat him to that line by several years.
    • After 1946, Porky was replaced with the title phrase being written out in script.
    • Spoofed in movies like Gremlins 2 and Who Framed Roger Rabbit?.
      • And on TV by Bat-Mite in Batman the Brave And The Bold ended every appearance of his this way. The final time was (despite the show being Lighter and Softer) a somewhat depressing moment of poetic justice. Bat-Mite is basically Mxyzpltk with Medium Awareness. In the series finale, he alters reality so the show will Jump the Shark and get cancelled so a Darker and Edgier series can take its place - which means the in-universe reality will disappear. The heroes fight to get things back to normal... but the show is cancelled anyway. However, similarly fourth-wall-proof Ambush Bug, who had helped the heroes try to save their reality, reminds Bat-Mite that he's part of the fiction - and a Darker and Edgier show has no place for a wacky character like Bat-Mite, so he will cease to exist as well. When Bat-Mite, who initially responded with a This Cannot Be!, is disappearing piece by piece and finally accepts his end, he says "I guess it can." He turns to the screen and does the classic wave, saying "That's all, folks." At this point, the part of Porky Pig's body that shows through the Iris Out hole in Looney Tunes' "That's All, Folks" sequences - his head an one arm - is all of Bat-Mite that still exists. He then fades forever - it's deserved, but damn.
      • Well that was the end of the episode, the end of the series though (which was the last few minutes had nearly all the characters of the show, hero and villain, coming to an after party hosted by Ambush Bug. Batman ends the show by thanking the viewers for watching and promises they'll meet again.
      • And on the Futurama episode "Reincarnation", with Bender saying "Th-th-th-that's all we got, chumps!"
    • It should be noted that Bosko and Buddy would say the line, as would Porky's original co-star Beans the Cat. Two Bugs Bunny shorts also featured a variation with Bugs in which he'd appear in place of Porky and say "And dat's de end!"
    • And even earlier in the early years of the Warner Bros. animation unit, when Foxy, a conspicuous lookalike of Mickey Mouse, pops up at the end of the Merrie Melodies shorts he starred in, saying "So Long, Folks!"
    • In the 1960s, they stopped using the "That's all, folks!" phrase altogether at the end of cartoons, and now ended with a black background logo with an abstract modernized WB logo and the byline "A WARNER BROS CARTOON" (with the "OO" bouncing up and down) to a weird version of the closing theme.
    • The 1990s short "Invasion of the Bunny Snatchers" ends with a scary, Limited Animation version of Porky attempting to say the line, but Bugs kicks him out and places the real Porky in the drum. Take a look here.
    • From 1934 to 1936, the Merrie Melodies films ended with a jester standing in front of the titles on a stage saying "That's all, folks!" The self-writing script began in 1936 with Friz Freleng's I Wanna Play House. Looney Tunes would do this (starting with Tex Avery's Golddiggers Of '36) for a year before using Porky in a drum.
  • Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs, true to their roots would have different characters give one of these at the end of the closing credits. Tiny Toons from their multicolored rings, and Animaniacs from the Warners' Watertower.
  • Histeria!, the Spiritual Successor to the above two, didn't do it the same way, but its episodes often ended with scenes in which the characters said "see you next time" and shouted out the show's name. (Sometimes, though, there'd be one last 15-second skit right before the credits.)
  • Interestingly, Universal's early cartoons starring Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and other assorted characters ended with the words "That's All, Folks" literally copied word for word. Oh, and it had a few "Bo-Bo-Be-Boops" before that line is even said as well.
    • What you're actually hearing the chorus sing is "That's Oswald," not "That's All, Folks." The recent Woody Woodpecker DVDs miscaption it as the latter, leading to confusion.
    • Also, the bo-bo-be-doop was a very common form of scatting back then. It didn't start with Betty Boop.
  • The Critic: "Excuse me, sir, the show's over." Jay's response is a Couch Gag.
  • Cosmo tries to do this at the end of The Fairly OddParents special "Channel Chasers". The background was rectangular rather than circular.

Cosmo: Th-Th-Th Th-Th-Th- Th-Th-Th-
Wanda: Cosmo? What's wrong?
Cosmo: (Shivering) Nothing. Its just really cold in here.

  • Madeline:

"And she turned off the light...
and closed the door...
and that's all there is...
there isn't anymore."

The Narrator: Bye-bye, Tinky Winky.
Tinky Winky: Bye-bye.
The Narrator: Bye-bye, Dipsy.
Dipsy: Bye-bye.
The Narrator: Bye-bye, Laa-Laa.
Laa-Laa: Bye-bye.
The Narrator: Bye-bye, Po.
Po: Bye-bye.

  • "Gooooooooo bye-bye!"
  • At the end of Aladdin, when the final Walt Disney Pictures logo appears, the Genie actually tells the viewers that the film is over and then bids them all goodbye.
  • The ending of The Aristocats. And yes, it's those two dogs that attacked Edgar the butler twice in the film that tell us that the film is over.
  • At the end of |Toy Story 2, we see one of the tour guide Barbie dolls telling the viewer, "Buh-bye now!" Of course, if you stick around to watch her tell people good-bye, she eventually stops and complains about how tired she is of having to do it.
  • The Mexican policeman from the Underdog Productions logo.
  • At the end of King Size Canary, the cat and mouse are now both the size of planets due to them consuming a magic potion that can turn them into giants. However, at the end of the short, the bottle containing said potion is now empty, and therefore the cat and mouse cannot change back and as a result the mouse tells the viewers that they actually have to end the picture because of this.
  • At the end of the credits of Finding Nemo, the Anglerfish appears one last time, only for it to be eaten up by a smaller fish, who swims away to end the movie.
    • Its counterpart Shark Tale ends with Ms. Sanchez the weaverfish telling everyone to go home because "it's past your bedtime."

Real Life

  • Mel Blanc's tombstone: That's All, Folks!
  • Standard bar or pub line at closing time: "This is the last call. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here." There was even a pop song with lyrics almost exactly like the above ("Closing Time" by Semisonic).
  • Windows 95, upon being shut down, would "end" on a blank screen except for the message "It is now safe to turn off your computer." Newer versions of Windows would probably do the same, if not for the advent of PCs that could just turn themselves off instead of waiting for the user.
  • Certain mobile phones, such as the Kyocera Jax, print "BYE" to the screen when turned off. More than a few DVD players or recorders display "HELLO" on power-up and "GOODBYE" on shutdown.
  • Virtually all data transmission standards specify "End of Stream" or functionally similar code. Data that, for whatever reason, comes after such code are treated as though they don't exist.


The trope is over. There is no more. Please click away from this page now. Go on, click away from it. Look, I'm only gonna say this once. What, you think there's some secret message hidden between these lines that you missed? Get out of here. Get the hell out.

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  1. ↑ That's All, Folks!
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