History Main / CliffhangerCopout

* InUniverse: Annie Wilkes of ''Literature/{{Misery}}'' absolutely hates it when authors do this, telling the story about her favorite cliffhanger serial from when she was a kid to Paul Sheldon after he did a similar thing while writing the manuscript for Annie's personal ''Misery'' novel. Paul had ended the last novel with Misery's burial, so Annie insisted that the new novel would start with a way of getting the heroine out of her grave, fair and square. He eventually comes up with the idea that Misery was NotQuiteDead from a bee-sting allergic reaction and was BuriedAlive, and is quite proud of the idea.

* ''Manga/CaseClosed'': A few stories end with Ran or someone else figuring out Conan's secret identity, only for them to [[StatusQuoIsGod suddenly forget it in the following episode]], no reason given.

* Facts about a character's circumstances are {{ret|con}}roactively {{Hand Wave}}d between installments (e.g., the hero tied up in a burning building who was completely unable to break his bonds in the previous episode suddenly becomes strong enough to break them in the resolution.) Depending on the circumstances, this can lead to some pretty glaring {{Plot Hole}}s.

The best cliffhangers pick up the story right where it left off and provide a clear resolution based off of everything that was shown to have occurred to viewers in the previous installment. And then there's these...

Compare RedHerringTwist. PseudoCrisis is a subtrope. Contrast OnceMoreWithClarity, in which new facts about the situation are revealed ''without'' retroactively changing the old ones. Has nothing to do with the movies ''Film/{{Cliffhanger}}'' or ''Film/CopOut''.

** A particularly notable instance was a CrossOver with ''Series/TheGreenHornet'', in which the Hornet and his sidekick Kato are actually fed through a machine that turns them into human-sized postage stamps! The cliffhanger is that the villain's thugs are about to do the same to Batman and Robin. The next-episode solution is...they fight off the thugs. And it turns out the Hornet and Kato managed to roll off the conveyor belt going through the stamp machine and were hiding inside it. Where did those human-sized stamps with their images on them in the previous episode come from?

* ''Manga/DetectiveConan'': A few stories end with Ran or someone else figuring out Conan's secret identity, only for them to [[StatusQuoIsGod suddenly forget it in the following episode]], no reason given.

-->"When you directed Dobbs to the room where I was paralysed there was one small thing you hadn't accounted for — that he would be wearing a regimental club tie which is 100% silk! The static electricity temporarily neutralised the forcefield, giving me time to take advantage of the inflammable properties of the brandy that you offered me earlier. Within the small amount of neck movement available to me under the magnetic paralysis, I formed my nasal cavity into a type of Liebig condenser, thereby concentrating the alcohol fumes in one place. I then forced the fumes down each nostril with such intensity that they were combusted by the lighted end of the dynamite, thus forming a natural blowtorch which completely severed the fuse, rendering the dynamite totally harmless. The rest was easy."

** In issue 24 (Volume 2), the kids have finally dragged Chase back, they've beaten their foes once and for all, and they're tired and weary as they arrive home... To find Iron Man and a bunch of mooks waiting. In Issue 25, they begin by... Meeting with the Kingpin. WordOfGod tells their appropriate response: [[spoiler:[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin They ran away.]]]]

* ''ComicBook/UncannyXMen'' issue #100 has Jean Grey in the cockpit of a damaged shuttle, flying through a massive radiation storm which we have been explicitly told several times ''will'' kill her. The issue ends with the radiation shielding giving out, and Jean faces certain, horrific death... two months later, issue #101 comes out, and the ''cover itself'' reveals Jean's fine and dandy. [[TookALevelInBadass More than that, actually.]]

* Near the end of ''Film/StandClearOfTheClosingDoors'', Ricky follows a man in a dragon jacket into a tunnel that floods while he's in there. [[spoiler:The next scene shows Ricky walking on the beach, completely unscathed, with no explanation for how he survived.]]

** Close second would be the end of Chapter 9, "The Living Dead", which featured the Hero in a closing spiked cage similar to the Batman example above. The cliffhanger showed the spikes closing in nearly to the point of puncturing the hero's body... the next episode backed the walls up considerably so the hero could use his gun as a stopper, holding the spiked wall at bay until the pressure ''broke the cage''.

** In the season finale, "Lian Yu", [[spoiler:Prometheus has rigged the entire island of Lian Yu with explosives that are set to go off after his death. The island is showered with explosions, and Oliver and his son William are the only ones clear from the blast zones, leaving the fate of everyone else in question.]] Come the following season's premiere [[spoiler:the only casualty of the explosions is William's mother and Oliver's ex, minor character Samantha, while almost everyone else was relatively unharmed, with Thea and Diggle being the only ones to even have any sort of injury.]] Some people have gone on to compare it to ''Series/{{Dynasty|1981}}'''s "Moldavian Massacre" cliffhanger, with both shows even airing the cliffhangers at the end of their respective fifth seasons.

** A particularly notable instance was a CrossOver with ''Series/TheGreenHornet'', in which the Hornet and his sidekick Kato are actually fed through a machine that turns them into human-sized postage stamps! The cliffhanger is that the villain's thugs are about to do the same to Batman and Robin. The next-episode solution is ... they fight off the thugs. And it turns out the Hornet and Kato managed to roll off the conveyor belt going through the stamp machine and were hiding inside it. Where did those human-sized stamps with their images on them in the previous episode come from?

* ''Series/{{Community}}'': The second season ends with Pierce declaring he's done with the study group and walking out on them, leaving audiences to wonder what this would mean in the next season. The resolution is... Pierce walking into the study room, explaining he'd changed his mind, and asking them to take him back. Probably deliberate, since it wasn't considered likely that Pierce would be gone from the group for good. HilariousInHindsight seasons later when [[RealLifeWritesThePlot Chevy Chase's strained relations with the rest of the cast and crew finally broke]], leading his character to [[BusCrash get in the way of a passing bus]].

* In the series finale of the original ''Series/{{Dallas}}'', JR Ewing takes out a gun after being convinced by a reflection of the Devil in his mirror that his life is meaningless now that he's lost Ewing Oil. JR holds the gun in his hand, and his brother Bobby hears a gunshot from downstairs. Bobby runs up, opens the door to JR's room with a look of shock on his face... and as the TV movie "JR Returns" would later explain, JR shot the mirror and climbed out the window, then fled to Paris to hide out for six months.

** Famously, in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS21E6TheCavesOfAndrozani "The Caves of Androzani"]], you actually see the Doctor and Peri get shot, execution style, and [[WhatCliffhanger fall down dead]]. The following episode resolves the conflict [[PseudoCrisis ten seconds]] in, when it is revealed that [[spoiler:the executed parties were [[ActuallyADoombot actually robot look-a-likes]]]].

** This happened in regards to Donna in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E17E18TheEndOfTime The End of Time]]". [[ItMakesSenseInContext The Doctor had previously wiped her memories of him and warned if she ever started to remember she would burn to death.]] At the end of episode one she starts to remember and her head starts to hurt... and at the beginning of episode two she just gets knocked out. Turns out it was all just a defence mechanism.

** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E1TheImpossibleAstronaut "The Impossible Astronaut"]] ends with [[spoiler:Amy shooting the person in the spacesuit... aka the little girl]]. In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E2DayOfTheMoon "Day of the Moon"]], it turns out that [[spoiler:she missed]], and the episode begins three months after the event.
** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS33E1AsylumOfTheDaleks "Asylum of the Daleks"]] ends with the Doctor having accidentally wiped himself from the memories and histories of the Daleks, with the implication that this is going to create a whole new dynamic between them. The [[Recap/DoctorWho2013CSTheTimeOfTheDoctor next appearance]] of the Daleks reveals that... they've just regained their memories of him off-screen.
** The new series episode [[Recap/DoctorWhoS33E13TheNameOfTheDoctor "The Name of the Doctor"]] suggests an in-story justification for ''every single case'' where a seemingly inescapable death was resolved in anticlimactic fashion: [[spoiler:the Great Intelligence trying to sabotage the Doctor's timeline only for one of Clara's temporal doppelgängers to undo the damage.]]

* ''Series/{{Farscape}}'': The first season ended with John Crichton and D'Argo adrift in space with Aeryn unable to rescue them due to enemy ships in the vacinity. The second season opens with D'Argo jolting awake and John explaining that Aeryn was eventually able to scoop them up and drop them to safety at their current location. Part of the issue is that "Mind The Baby" was actually meant to be the ''second'' episode of the season. After filming the original premiere, which involved the rest of Moya's crew on a side-journey to [[PlanetOfHats a planet full of lawyers]], the producers felt it wasn't strong enough to justify making the audience wait an extra week for the resolution of the cliffhanger. The original episode was shuffled to later in the season (and framed as a flashback) which left John and D'Argo's rescue feeling rather abrupt and anti-climactic.
* ''Series/TheFlash2014'': "Enter Zoom" ends with [[spoiler:The Flash brutally beaten by Zoom and his final words of the episode are Barry telling his friends in a blind panic that he can't feel his legs.]] Cut to the start of the next episode and the first shot is [[spoiler:Barry walking again (albeit only a few steps before tiring) and a couple of throwaway lines about how much he's healed in a week. While it is worth noting that the majority of the episode is spent with Barry still healing, the immediate cliffhanger of Barry being crippled is totally jumped.]] Watching the episodes back to back leads to the "cliffhanger" lasting as long as the closing credits.

** [[spoiler: Theon and Sansa]] end Season 5 attempting to escape Winterfell by leaping from its high walls with only the briefest shot of a [[SoftWater very thin skiff of snow]] to imply they might survive and miles of open ground to cross before they reach any cover. Come Season 6, however, and they're already running through the forest without so much as a twisted ankle and their captor, who has a whole army and loves HuntingTheMostDangerousGame, sends just six men after them.

* ''Series/LondonsBurning'' subverts and uses the trope straight in the same situation. One episode finished with a sewer explosion knocking one of the firemen on his back and sending a manhole cover flying into the air. Viewers saw a shot of the cover flying end over end... and landing straight on the hapless firemen's head, all from his point of view. The next episode opened with the same shot but finished with him waking up, as it was AllJustADream. Then it turned out it really '''had''' happened (subverting this trope), but the cover only landed near him despite how it looked previously (looping back to play the trope straight), causing him to have recurring nightmares.

* ''Series/MartialLaw'' had a ReTool-induced copout. The end of season 1 saw Sammo and BigBad Lee Hei falling out of a helicopter over the ocean. Sometime during the summer, though, it was decided to retool the show, and instead of season 2 picking up off where the first had ended, it opened with a regular episode, with only scant allusions to a resolution to the previous events--Sammo asking if someone who's trying to kill him with a bomb is seeking vengeance for Lee Hei's death, and a fellow officer asking Sammo, "Hey, you fell out of a helicopter into the Pacific and survived... how much worse could a bomb be?"

* ''Series/PersonOfInterest'': One episode in season four ended with Finch looking at a street camera and telling The Machine that it was time for him and it to talk. Come the next episode... and it was like the cliffhanger had never happened. No mention is made of the conversation, it's not even revealed how they ''could'' have had a conversation, and it's never brought up again.

'''Alpha 5:''' Oh…I’m so sorry Power Rangers. I guess I should have told you right away… \\

* The second episode of ''Series/TrueDetective'''s second season ends on a completely unexpected cliffhanger that had people talking for a week, as it seemed as if [[spoiler:Colin Farrell, billed as the star of season 2, was killed by a man in a bird mask with a shotgun]]. In the next episode it turned out [[spoiler:the shotgun was loaded with riot rounds]], leading [[http://kotaku.com/true-detective-s-massive-cliffhanger-was-a-letdown-1716002979 several critics]] [[http://www.vox.com/2015/7/5/8899279/true-detective-recap-colin-farrell-ray-lives to call the show out]] for turning a game-changing twist into a total copout.

* ''[[Series/WonderWoman1975 Wonder Woman]]'': "Phantom of the Roller Coaster: Part 1" ends with [[SecretIdentity Diana Prince]] inside her car looking back, just before an enormous truck smashed it... [[NoOneCouldSurviveThat with her inside]]. Part 2 begins with an already transformed Wonder Woman outside the car lassoing the perpetrators.

* The 4th Episode of ''VideoGame/TheWalkingDead: Season Two'' ended with the main characters in a MexicanStandoff against another group of survivors. The protagonists outnumbered them, but despite this the other survivors were highly intimidating, [[spoiler:implied to have once been connected to the Russian Mafia, and before anything can happen, one of your teammates dies of exhaustion and turns into a zombie]]. In spite of this, the only deaths at the start of the next episode were [[spoiler:minor characters on ''their'' side. All the protagonists walked away alive]].

* The ''{{Webcomic/Morphe}}'' webcomic had to go on a brief hiatus in 2014 while the creators dealt with a couple conventions and prepared a large amount of content for a coming update. Prior to the hiatus the comic ended with one of the main characters, Billy Thatcher, [[http://morphe.thewebcomic.com/comics/2034197/chapter-4-page-36-thatcher-silenced/ being shot in the head.]] After the hiatus [[spoiler:the scene is reversed and it is revealed and replayed with Billy getting shot in the shoulder instead, revealing Amical had turned back time "one turn" and altered his actions]].

* {{Invoked|Trope}} in a front-page article on Website/SomethingAwful in which [[http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/red-wedding-blimp.php an irate fan of a radio serial]] vows to never tune into the program again after the latest chapter had the hero's arch-nemesis kill off several main characters... until the show's writers "fix what they had done", "like they did when the mummy stole the rocket, but it turned out Joyce was on a different rocket".

* ''WesternAnimation/TransformersPrime'': [[spoiler: The Season 2 finale ends with Megatron and Starscream standing in the ruins of the Autobot base before panning to Optimus Prime's hand, broken and sparking, sticking out of the wreckage, the clear implication being that he's dead. At the start of Season 3, it is revealed that Optimus was still alive, albeit heavily damaged, and his rescue from the ruins by Smokescreen is a further copout, as he was last seen going through the Ground Bridge to an unknown location, and he wasn't even the last one to leave the base.]]

* InUniverse: Annie Wilkes of ''Literature/{{Misery}}'' absolutely hates it when authors do this, telling the story about her favorite cliffhanger serial from when she was a kid, quoted above, to Paul Sheldon after he did a similar thing while writing the manuscript for Annie's personal ''Misery'' novel. Paul had ended the last novel with Misery's burial, so Annie insisted that the new novel would start with a way of getting the heroine out of her grave, fair and square. He eventually comes up with the idea that Misery was NotQuiteDead from a bee-sting allergic reaction and was BuriedAlive, and is quite proud of the idea.

** In the season finale, "Lian Yu", [[spoiler:Prometheus has rigged the entire island of Lian Yu with explosives that are set to go off after his death. The island is showered with explosions, and Oliver and his son William are the only ones clear from the blast zones, leaving the fate of everyone else in question.]] Come the following season's premiere [[spoiler:the only casualties of the explosions are William's mother and Oliver's ex, minor character Samantha, while almost everyone else was relatively unharmed, with Thea and Diggle being the only ones to even have any sort of injury.]] Some people have gone on to compare it to ''Series/{{Dynasty|1981}}'''s "Moldavian Massacre" cliffhanger, with both shows even airing the cliffhangers at the end of their respective fifth seasons.

* Facts about a character's circumstances are {{ret|con}}roactively {{Hand Wave}}d between installments (e.g., the hero tied to a chair in a building rigged to blow up who wasn't able to even break his bonds prior to the building exploding at the conclusion of one episode is seen breaking free and escaping at the beginning of the next before the bombs go off). Depending on the circumstances, this can lead to some pretty glaring {{Plot Hole}}s.

** "[[Recap/SherlockS01E03TheGreatGame The Great Game]]" ends with John and Sherlock at gunpoint from all angles with no possible escape in sight, with Sherlock pointing his gun at a bomb near Moriarty. In "[[Recap/SherlockS02E01AScandalInBohemia A Scandal in Bohemia]]", Moriarty decides to let them go because someone calls him with "a better offer".

* Garth Nix's ''Literature/SeventhTower'' series is also guilty of this. A particularly annoying one in the first book involves the main character falling over backwards at the end of one chapter and being caught immediately at the beginning of the next, which also means mining [[WhatCliffhanger an utter non-event for drama in the first place]] ''just'' for the sake of not having it come to anything.

%% * ''{{Literature/Goosebumps}}'' was notorious for doing this several times a book, often at the end of nearly every chapter.

* ''Series/LegendsOftomorrow''

** Season 2 ended in a TimeCrash and the Waverider landing in LA now besieged by dinosaurs. Season 3 is an ImmediateSequel where the Legends wander the streets, wondering how they are going to fix this mess. The Legends' former leader Rip Hunter then shows up and introduces his new organisation the [[TimePolice Time Bureau]], who promptly sends the dinosaurs back to their own time.

* A regular feature of the '60s ''Series/Batman1966'' series. Famously, every other episode would end with the Dynamic Duo in a diabolical DeathTrap, struggling against their bonds, desperately casting about for a means of escape, or glaring in fear and/or determination at their impending destruction while the narrator fretted about their certain doom. The next episode would begin with the Caped Crusaders escaping the trap, sometimes through legitimately inventive means, but just as often through copouts like "someone shows up to rescue them," "they'd prepared something earlier in the day and we didn't show you" or the ever-popular "they use a Bat-gadget they have on them for just such an emergency that they apparently briefly forgot they had during their moment of panic at the end of the last episode." If they were unconscious at the end of the previous episode, they'd generally just wake up. On one occasion they were saved by a power outage; on another, by an '''eclipse'''.

* The end ''Manga/JojosBizarreAdventurePhantomBlood'' has Dio's still-living head in the grip of a dying Johnathan, left aboard a burning, sinking ship as Erina takes the [[VampiresSleepInCoffins reinforced vampire coffin]] Dio planned to escape into. Decades later, ''[[Manga/JojosBizarreAdventureStardustCrusaders Stardust Crusaders]]'' begins with Dio (who put his head on Johnathan's body) dredged up inside a coffin--which the narration claims is the ''same'' coffin, even though we saw Erina being rescued from it.

* ''Anime/MacrossZero'': At the end of Episode 4, the island where the protagonists are getting fuel is air bombed (or something). By the start of Episode 5, the heroes have already been rescued except the native girl who has been captured. Also, flying submarine aircraft carriers.

* In ''Manga/FairyTail'', Wendy gets hit by a spell and vanishes into thin air at the end of the chapter, and at the start of the next [[spoiler:she's just inside Horologium, who conveniently popped up right then and is clinging to the ceiling.]] Pretty funny that, before we realize [[spoiler: that Wendy is safe and not hit by Hades' attack, Hades keeps a very calm face, as Wendy disappearing was supposed to happen. Shouldn't he be like 'What happened to my spell?']]
* Happens frequently in ''Manga/{{Nisekoi}}''. The end of many chapters, particularly in the second half of the series, suddenly steers that chapter's story towards one of the many series-long mysteries, such as the identity of the girl who promised Raku she'll marry him, the locket with the missing key, or the children's book with the torn-out final page. Except for the last dozen chapters or so, the beginning of the following chapter will invariably lead the characters to a RedHerring, lead them to a dead end, segue to a CrypticConversation that goes nowhere, or get interrupted by a different problem requiring the characters' immediate attention.
* [[Anime/AldnoahZero Aldnoah Zero's]] first season ends with [[spoiler:Asseylum being shot multiple times in the back, complete with a slow mo shot of her body collapsing and her trademark pendant shattering, Saezbaun getting riddled with bullets in revenge for the above, Inaho shot point blank in the head by Slain after turning on him, and almost the entire supporting cast badly wounded and about to be attacked by overwhelming enemy forces. The second season reveals that literally ''no one'' died in season 1's final battle.]] While many were relieved, others complained that it completely ruined the tension of season 1's finale.

->If they'd shown us that last time, I wouldn't have spent all week worrying about him.

** The first series' third episode ends with Lister triumphantly saying he passed the chef's exam, and thus now outranks Rimmer. The next episode reveals in Holly's OpeningNarration that he was lying.
** The series 2 finale ends with [[MisterSeahorse Lister becoming pregnant]] after sleeping with his female AlternateUniverse counterpart. This was [[HandWave briefly explained]] in the Series III premiere as part of an OpeningScroll of UnreadablyFastText, which also resolved the foreshadowing from the first series' second episode that Lister will eventually have twin sons.

** Series VI ended with the entire crew aboard Starbug as it was destroyed by their future selves. A quick gag at the beginning of Series VII reveals that this caused a paradox which hit the ResetButton.

** The cliffhanger ending of Series VIII -- in which Rimmer is trapped aboard Red Dwarf as it disintegrates from a metal-eating virus and the rest of the crew have abandoned ship or escaped into the Mirror Universe -- was emphatically ''not'' resolved by the miniseries ''Back to Earth'', which instead begins with a title card saying "Nine Years Later". Given that the ship is intact and all the main characters are present and/or accounted for (though not alive in the once again holographic Rimmer's case), it's ambiguous whether ''Back to Earth'' even follows the cliffhanger or if it follows an alternate ending.[[note]]"Only the Good..." had an alternate ending which can be seen on the DVD's [[DeletedScene Deleted Scenes]] in which the crew manage to find an antidote to the virus and clearly survive[[/note]]
*** The Series X finale, "The Beginning", finally addresses the Series VIII cliffhanger, with Rimmer claiming credit for saving Red Dwarf. He is [[TheUnreveal interrupted]] before he's able to explain how he did it. Twice.

** The first series ends with John and Sherlock at gunpoint from all angles with no possible escape in sight, with Sherlock pointing his gun at a bomb near Moriarty. In the next series, Moriarty decides to let them go because someone calls him with "a better offer".

** The episode [[RWBYV6E11TheLadyInTheShoe "The Lady In The Shoe"]] has both Ruby literally hanging onto the cliffside with her scythe while the airship that has Oscar and Maria inside it is shot down with a missile. The next episode, [[Recap/RWBYV6E12SeeingRed "Seeing Red"]], has Ruby just pull herself up while the airship is revealed to be just fine.