The End

This is a page for the trope The End. For pages with similar names, see also:
The Marvel Comic series The End | The 1978 movie The End | 2 Video Games called The End | The 2010 webcomic The End

"The end of THE END can be found at the end of THE END."

— Lemony Snicket, explaining where to find the last pages of the book fittingly entitled The End.

The story's over. Time to put up an intertitle card saying "THE END". If you really want to be sophisticated, write it in cursive. The words "You Have Been Watching" followed by the ending credits was popular in Live-Action Television for a while, particularly but not exclusively in Sitcoms.

Most movies in past years have used this as the standard end to the story, but now it is used off and on, at the whim of the writers. When films only had opening credits, this was a way to indicate the end of the film. Now that opening credits are shortened (or absent) and the full credits come at the end of the film, this isn't as useful.

In some cases the show will end on a sad note, but the next moment is a flowery card stating "The End", accompanied by a bright fanfare. It is common to play this for laughs.

The French translation, "FIN", is often used with Le Film Artistique or if the filmmakers want an aquatic pun. For frustrating endings, there's always the Italian translation "FINE".

The video game variant, seen in quite a few Fighting Game examples, is to show the usual "Game Over" screen after the ending and credits. This time it's not because you failed, it's just because... well, the game is over. Sometimes the phrase "Thank you for playing" is added. If you're unlucky, that will be the entire ending.

Compare That's All, Folks!, and contrast To Be Continued. See also Interrupted by the End.

There are two video games called The End: the one from 2012 can be found here, while the one from 2015 can be found here. Similarly, the webcomic by that name can be found here.

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Interesting variations of this trope:

Anime & Manga

• Subverted in Cromartie High School. One sketch ends with the caption "The End... of the introduction" and the episode keeps on going.
• The final episode of Dragon Ball GT had "The End" at the end of it.
• The last episode of Puella Magi Madoka Magica has a card with runes on it that has the japanese word "Oshimai" which could either translate to "Fin" or "Concludes." Notably it also says "Puella Magi Madoka Magica" under that but "Magica" is spelled with a "k" instead of a "c."
• Neon Genesis Evangelion's conclusive theatrical film was actually titled, The End of Evangelion. And it proved to be so, up until a full-blown restart of the series ten years later.
• At the end of the credits of the final episode of Sailor Moon, Usagi says "Oshimai...", with the rest of the Inner Guardians finishing with "...dayo!" (meaning, "It's the end!") as said text appeared onscreen. The Viz dub has Usagi/Sailor Moon say "The end!", followed by the Inner Guardians saying "See ya!"
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure uses this when concluding each part. Most parts use "完," the Japanese kanji equivalent of this trope, but Golden Wind, which takes place in Italy, uses "fine," the Italian word for "end."

Comic Books

• The last panel of Tintin: The Castafiore Emerald has the parrot Iago (no, not that Iago) saying, "Blistering barnacles, that's the end!"

Fan Works

• The Turnabout Storm novelization ends with the word "Finis", French for "finished".
• The last panel of a My Little Pony: Rock Is Magic comic always says, "This is the end, my only friend, the end."

Eastern Animation

• Very common in Soviet and Eastern European animated shorts; the Russian word is Koniets, in Polish Koniec and so on. Latvian examples have been seen on internet sites teaching the language using interactive Flash animations; the word here is Beigas.

Films — Animation

• The Thief and the Cobbler: the Thief steals the letters from the end title.
• The Aristocats: "Hey Napoleon, that sounds like The End." "I'm the leader. I'll say when it's The End." (lettering reading "The End" bumps into his head) "It's The End."
  • Over a quarter-century earlier, The Three Caballeros ended with an elaborate fireworks display which has "The End" in three languages in the colors of the flags of the countries being represented: "Fin" (in Spanish and in the colors of Mexico's flag), "Fim" (in Portuguese and in the colors of Brazil's flag), and finally, "The End" (in English and in the colors of the flag of the United States).
  • In fact, just about every single animated Disney movie starting with Pinocchio and ending with The Fox and the Hound actually all ended this way (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs did not have a "The End" card at the end of the film, instead the film ends with a picture of the RKO Radio Pictures logo (but during the RKO Radio era and on the Diamond Edition, Signature Edition, and Disney+ prints of Snow White). Some prints of the film from the Buena Vista era (including the 1994 VHS release and the Platinum Edition release) have a "The End" card; the RKO Radio logo was reinstated starting with the Diamond Edition print of the film. The first film since Snow White not to have a "The End" card was 1985's The Black Cauldron, which was also the first animated Disney movie to have closing credits since Alice in Wonderland).
    • Occasionally a Disney feature released since then may have "The End" appear before the credits roll, usually as a stylish touch, such as The Great Mouse Detective, Aladdin, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and The Emperor's New Groove.
• Only four Pixar films use a proper "The End" card at the ending of the film: A Bug's Life, Finding Nemo, Finding Dory and Coco. Ratatouille, meanwhile, has a variation: it ends with the word "Fin", which is French for "end." Luca has it in Italian and English: "FINE (The End)"
• Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea begins with "the beginning" and ends with "the end".
• Only five Sony Pictures Animation films use a proper "The End" card at the ending of the film: Open Season, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Hotel Transylvania, Hotel Transylvania 2 and Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation.
• In Robot Carnival, a post-credit scene shows a man's house exploding, replaced with END built of steel beams.

Films — Live-Action

• This can lead to Cross-Cultural Kerfluffle in old Swedish films. The Swedish for "The End" is "Slut". The Phantom Carriage and Häxan are two examples of deadly serious dramas that end on a moment of unintentional hilarity (for English-speakers).
• All of the Air Buddies films end with this caption.
• Antonia's Line: One of the overarching themes of the movie, which follows life in one Dutch village over fifty years, is the circle of life and how nothing really dies. So the final chyron of the movie, right before the credits roll, says "And as this long chronicle reaches its conclusion, nothing has come to an end."
• The end of the 1956 Best Picture winner Around the World in 80 Days: "This IS the end." (As opposed to, "This are the end?")
• Back to the Future Part III does "The End" in the style of the Back To The Future logo (like "To Be Continued" and "To Be Concluded" in the previous two films).
• The Boston Strangler: The closing credits, after noting that Albert DeSalvo was never tried for the stranglings, say "THIS FILM HAS ENDED, BUT THE RESPONSIBILTY OF SOCIETY FOR THE EARLY RECOGNITION AND TREATMENT OF THE VIOLENT AMONG US HAS YET TO BEGIN."
• The 1947 Russian version of Cinderella ends with the goofy king finally carrying through on his constant threats to abdicate. He gives his wig and crown to his page boy, then talks for a little bit about how kind and generous the page boy/new king is, and about the page boy's tender feelings. Then he says "I love these wonderful feelings, which will never come to an—", and then he looks straight at the camera and says "—end." This is followed immediately by the closing "The End" title card (Russian конец, "konets").
• The Devil Strikes at Night is about a Serial Killer case. The movie ends with a telegram reporting that Bruno, the serial killer, was executed. His case file is closed, a "CASE CLOSED" stamp appears on the folder, and the film ends.
• The Dove, a parody of Ingmar Bergman movies, is filled with As Long as It Sounds Foreign faux-Swedish dialogue that mostly consists of putting "-ska" at the ends of words. It ends with "ENDSK" (not "Slut"!).
• The closing credits of Fast Times at Ridgemont High end on a shot of the "The End" screen from Missile Command (see below).
• A Fish Called Wanda ends with the word FIN.
• Funeral Parade of Roses: One of the craziest parts of the movie comes at the end, after Eddie has stabbed his eyes out and is staggering down the staircase. Completely out of nowhere, a cheerful man in a suit pops up onscreen. Smiling, he notes how shocking and horrible Funeral Parade of Roses was. Then he says "Let's look forward to the next film! Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye!"
• The Get Smart movie The Nude Bomb featured the three main characters rendered nude in the final shot; as they ran away from the camera, three "THE END" cards appear over their naked behinds as a Visual Pun.
• Defied in Hangmen Also Die!. The film ends with the following text:
  NOT
  The End
• Hercules Returns. As the Italian sword-and-sandal movie comes to an end, The Narrator announces that everything is just dandy. On being told that's "a bit mincey", he decides everything is just...

  Title Card saying FINE ^note (Italian for "End")

• Inverted in Hill 24 Doesn't Answer, which ends with text reading "THE BEGINNING".
• Inverted in 1929 Douglas Fairbanks film The Iron Mask. It was Fairbanks's farewell to both silent films and the action movie genre that he'd basically invented but was aging out of. It has a Bittersweet Ending in which the Rightful King Returns but all of The Three Musketeers are killed, followed by D'Artagnan himself (Fairbanks) getting killed by a stab wound In the Back. In the last scene D'Artagnan's soul jumps up to the skies to join his departed buddies. The four of them then run off into the heavens to seek "greater adventure beyond". Then the film ends with the following title card:
  "The Beginning."
  • Same with the Soviet film Nachalo - but it also features no opening credits whatsoever. Justified, as the film deals with the beginning of the career of a future movie star - and of course, nachalo is "the beginning" in Russian.
• The second Kill Bill movie used this as an affectionate sort of Homage.
• Every film directed by Stanley Kubrick ended this way. Warner Bros. insisted on following his "The End" card with their logo for Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut, but for all of his earlier films it is the very last card in the closing credits (where there are closing credits).
• Lilies of the Field: It's a film about a laborer and would-be architect building a chapel for a group of nuns. The laborer (Sidney Poitier) often leads the nuns in singing the old gospel song "Amen". As the film ends, "Amen" comes up onto the screen instead of "The End".
• In Love (2015) the ending card flashes on screen right after the protagonist says or thinks to… someone "I will love you until the end"; the significance of this juxtaposition is left up to the viewer to decide.
• Me and My Gal: The film ends with Pat Riley stepping in front of the camera, looking at the lens, and saying "Well, it's all over, come on, let's have another drink." He had previously broken the fourth wall to look at the camera and invite the audience for a drink during his daughter's wedding reception.
• The FIN pun is also used at the end of The Meg, whose title character is a megalodon shark with obligatory Shark Fin of Doom.
• Mickey Blue Eyes, where the characters talk about superfluous definite articles in names like "The La Trattoria" and "The La Brea Tar Pits," ends with a "The The End" card.
• In Monty Python and the Holy Grail there are no end credits or titles. Arthur and what's left of the knights are piled into the back of a police van, a cop places his hand over the camera lens and everything goes black. Cue really catchy tune (the extended version of the intermission music). That's all you get for the next five minutes: black screen + catchy tune.
  • And Now For Something Completely Different starts with the "How Not To Be Seen" sketch, the opening titles and then a sudden "The End."
• Moulin Rouge! has a variation—at the end of the credits there is a stylistic rendering of the movie (and its Show Within a Show)'s main theme, complete with flourishing font and a big heart: "This is a story about beauty, freedom, truth, and above all things, love."
• Muppets Most Wanted literally starts with the "The End" of the previous Muppet movie.
• Experimental Leave the Camera Running documentary interview Portrait of Jason, ends, after concluding the interview with Jason Holliday, with director Shirley Clarke offscreen saying "The end. The end. That's it, it's over. The end."
• Promise Her Anything has the credits rolling over a neon sign advertising "NON-STOP" flights to Italy. At the end the "NON" part burns out leaving only "STOP", and the film stops.
• In Road to Bali, Bob Hope is unsatisfied with the ending, so he keeps trying to shove the "The End" card off the screen, until it becomes "Positively The End."
• Screamers: The Hunting ends with a shot of the Fetus Terrible sprouting a killing blade and a title card saying THE BEGINNING, implying that the events shown on Sirius 6B will now take place on Earth.
• At the end of the 1933 version of State Fair, the Romantic Rain and wind cause the "State Fair" Title Drop billboard to peel away. The peeled-away sections reveal another poster underneath that says "The End".
• The Steel Helmet: Set in The Korean War. At the end, most of The Squad has died defending the observation post, but Zack, Tanaka, Thompson, and the bald guy survive. They are relieved by another squad and it's implied they go on fighting the war. The title card at the end says:
  "There is no end to this picture."
• Surrealistic short film Stop Look and Listen involves two drivers on the side roads of Los Angeles, one safe and the other very unsafe. The short ends with a shot of a street sign that says "END".
• Every episode of The Three Stooges had a The End card with Greek Comedy/Tragedy masks.
• The Trouble with Harry offers a variation ending with "The Trouble With Harry... Is Over".
• Inverted in the British WW2 propaganda movie The Way Ahead (1944) which concludes with the soldiers advancing into the attack with the words THE BEGINNING. One assumes the producers wanted the audience to believe our heroes were just getting started in defeating the Nazis, as opposed to marching off to their END.
• Volga-Volga: A Russian musical film that ends, after a big closing number, with the cast members flipping up big golden cardboard letters that spell конец ("end").
• As part of its classic horror movie throwback, Werewolf by Night (2022) ends with a black and white "The End" imposed on the shot.
• Westfront 1918: A 1930 German anti-war film that, after a terrifying sequence of soldiers dying horrible deaths in the trenches, ends with a title card saying "ENDE?!". Director G.W. Pabst was of course correct in guessing that the war to end all wars really wasn't the end.
• Beach Party has "The End Almost" before the credits.
• The last shot of Blue Iguana (2018) shows Eddie's favorite comic book, open to the last page, which shows the words "THE END."
• In I Think I Do (1997), the words "The End" appear and are then knocked off the screen by "The Beginning."
• In Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows Watson ends his chronicle of his adventures with this on his typewriter, before Holmes in his urban disguise adds a question mark when Watson leaves the room, which transitions to the end credits.
• In The Ghost Goes Gear, Spencer holds a clapperboard with "The End" written on it. He bats a piece of equipment out of the shot, then says, "Let's face it, folks, it had to end somewhere. 1282, take 1, the end," and claps it shut.

Literature

• The last book in A Series of Unfortunate Events is actually called The End, but this is deeply subverted by the book itself.
  • At the end of every book there's a letter to the editor, telling him where to find the next manuscript. The last chapter of The End is treated as though it was a separate book contained in the same volume, with a different dedication page, publishing page, etc. Thus, in his letter to the editor:
    The End of The End can be found at The End of The End.
• The last entry in the New Redhouse Turkish-English Dictionary is "züzuniyet: final word, conclusion." That this is a made-up word is lampshaded in the errata, which correctly points out that "the last entry in the dictionary is unaccountably left without a derivation."
• The first book of Tamora Pierce's Song of the Lioness quartet ends with "The Beginning".
• Unseen Academicals has an interesting variant based on a real-life bit of sports announcement. It says "You think it's all over?" twice, before cutting to short epilogue scenes and then, finally, "Now it's over."

Live-Action TV

• The finale of season 3 of Canada's Worst Driver has "The End" appear just after an Iris Out, followed by the closing credits.
• Hikonin Sentai Akibaranger: The words "The End" are the final enemy, which prompts the Akibarangers to team up with the villains to destroy it in a futile attempt to prevent the series from ending.
• Parodied on The Kids in the Hall. One of the sketches was written by a writer who kept making typos. When it's over, a title card comes up reading "THE AND."
• Lost cuts to black and displays the show's title in white. The season 5 finale ended with the apparent detonation of a hydrogen bomb, so instead it flashed to white and displayed the title in black. This also seems to herald that the status quo has been changed in a major way by the events of the finale.
  • And the final episode is called 'The End'.
• Monty Python's Flying Circus:
  Announcer (John 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. (pause, he looks round at the sea) 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."
  • In the Michael Ellis episode, "The End" and the closing credits immediately follow the opening titles.
  • In the "How to Recognize Different Parts of the Body" episode, Inspector Zatapathique bows after his performance of "Bing Tiddle Tiddle Bong." An arrow appears pointing at his rear end, and the voiceover says, "Number 31: The End."
  • "Nobody expects the Sp—" THE END "Oh, bugger!"
  • In one sketch, a presenter demonstrates a gesture he wants to use to show he's finished talking. As he does so, the series' "THE END" card appears, and he has to shoo it away.
  • "Owl-Stretching Time" ends with the Colonel, who's had it with all this nonsense, coming onscreen and saying "Right! No, I warned you, no, I warned you about the slogan, right. That's the end. Stop the programme! Stop it." And the credits roll.
  • One episode had Eric Idle in several sketches as a store customer. Not satisfied with the ending of the episode, he goes back to the store to buy a better one, and the counterman makes several suggestions. "Romantic ending?" "No." "Fade to black?" "Nah." "How about a sudden ending?" Smash cut to the closing production-company logo.
• The last episode of Red Dwarf ends with "THE END" on a black background, held in silence for several seconds... until the words "THE SMEG IT IS!" appear, to a cheering audience. There would not be any continuation, however, for a decade.
  • Also, the first episode of Red Dwarf is titled "The End". At the end of the episode the screen fades to an intertitle declaring "The Beginning".
• The Merlin made-for-TV movie. "There's no more. That's The End of magic." No, really, that's how it ends!
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Musical Episode "Once More With Feeling" ends with a big beautiful splashy "The End"...overlaid on an image of Buffy and Spike kissing.
• The season five finale (and could-have-been Grand Finale) of Supernatural ends with Chuck the prophet typing up the last chapter of his visions while pondering how hard it is to deliver a satisfying ending. We see him type the actual words "The End". "No doubt, endings are hard - but then, nothing ever really ends, does it?" He smiles and vanishes into thin air, implying he might have actually been God.
• The Goodies. The episode "The Movies" has a string of Breaking the Fourth Wall gags, culminating in the letters of THE END being used by the comedic heroes to thump each other. Then another THE END starts floating up the screen, catching on their clothes and carrying them off into the sunset.
• Each episode of The Dead Files ends with static statements talking about what the clients have (or haven't) done in regards to Amy's advice on how to deal with the reported haunting, along with the state of the paranormal activity.
• The soap opera Guiding Light ended its 57-year run on CBS with its two principals happily driving off into the horizon as "The End" slowly appears on the screen, followed by a slow fade out.
• The Filipino version for this is "Wakas" ("End") and is sometimes used to close the finale of a Soap Opera before the credits roll.

Music

• The Beatles song "The End" was supposed to be the actual end of Abbey Road, but "Her Majesty" got tacked onto the end as a secret track.
• The first track of the My Chemical Romance album The Black Parade is entitled "The End." (note the full stop), signifying the Patient's approaching death.
• The bonus track on the explicit version of Blue October's Approaching Normal is entitled "The End". With an "Everybody Dies" Ending, to boot.
• A Flock of Seagulls' "The End", which precedes The Story Of A Young Heart's final track "Suicide Day".
• The Doors ended their first album, The Doors with The End, a song which insinuates at first that death is not as bad as some think. That idea gets abandoned quickly as the song progresses into Nightmare Fuel territory, particularly in the infamous "the killer awoke before dawn" sequence.
• Jack Stauber's "The End" is a nightmarish one. The only lyrics to the song espouse that "There are no happy ends; there's just The End", and the accompanying music video is filled with end cards to movies and television shows.
• They Might Be Giants: "Everything Right Is Wrong Again" ends with the lyrics "And now this song is over now (x3)/This song is over now." As categorical as this is, the same lyrics occur midway through the song also.

Tabletop Games

• Century: Due to the games' nature as a trilogy, A New World, the final installment, has "The End" printed on the side of the box.

Theatre

• Several Tsukiuta stage plays end with this, projected, including ROMEO in the Darkness and Rabbits Kingdom. It is often accompanied by swelling music.

Theme Parks

• At the end of the former The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera at Universal Studios, a target airbag that says "END" on it appears.

Video Games

• In Arfenhouse 3, all the joke endings use the message "The bloody friggin' end." The real ending has "TEH EDN!!!!!" and a string of "LOL"s degenerating into gibberish.
• The animated cutscene which ends the re-release of Chrono Trigger ends with "Fin" after the Sequel Hook to Chrono Cross.
• Contra Spirits has a Chinese bootleg NES version which ends with "THEND" (sic).
• Cute Knight series: Happens for both games, with buttons, but they do different things in each.
  • The first game, Cute Knight, ends its endings with a "The End" button that moves the game to the credits.
  • Cute Knight Kingdom, ends its endings with a "The End" button that moves the game to the Start Screen, and a "Save Story" button that has the player select a location on their computer to save the ending screen text to.
• Darkwing Duck on NES just has a The End screen and no credits.
• It happens to every ending in A Day In The Life Of A Slice Of Bread.
• The final ending cutscene in Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth shows someone In-Universe had written "owari" (Over) via the mayonnaise on Kyoko's coffee in her office, a final show of her odd drinking habits and the character the player has come to know over the course of the game, before Fade to Black.
• Donkey Kong Country tries to trick you with a fake credits during the final boss. After the Fake-Out Fade-Out, it says "The End?"
• The original Doom would give you a large "THE END" over a backdrop of a burning city and spiked rabbit's head after completing the third (and then final) episode, which was then riddled with a burst of bullet holes for emphasis. Then the game was later re-released as The Ultimate Doom with a fourth episode tacked-on, but the game's "THE END" sequence was still only displayed after beating the third episode. Episode four just got the same generic ending style as the first two episodes.
• Dragon Quest XI features both variants; the words "The end" close off its first ending, though they're followed by a To Be Continued to let you know there's more. The true ending instead has a feather pen write "Fin".
• DX Ball: The last board in the game has exploding bricks forming the words "THE END".
• In The End Is Nigh, The End uses the title of the game, as well as the first world's name and the ending title after the credits.
• A staple of the Final Fantasy series, which end with either "THE END" or "Fin" on a starry background. Noteworthy examples include:
  • Final Fantasy VIII, in which Selphie's best Limit Break called The End automatically finished a battle by transporting the monsters to a floral field with butterflies flittering all over. The screen goes dark, and text comes up reading THE END. It can defeat any monster, including Omega Weapon. It also has a true "The end" screen after the credits.
  • Final Fantasy Type-0, whose original PSP release has the kanji "完" substituting for the usual "The End". The HD release has both, with the words "The End" under the kanji.
  • World of Final Fantasy, which has a giant "END" graphic in broken letters during the game's bad ending. However, in a partial subversion, the true ending has no such equivalent.
• The True Final Boss of Hellsinker simply ends with a "The End".
• AI Dungeon 2: Some of its adventures end this way, like this one, drawn from a list of adventures, here, at Ars Technica:
  Your ghost reports the cop to his supervisor who then calls an ambulance. The End.
• Staple of The Legend of Zelda.
• Metal Slug games always show the "Game Over" screen after the credits, but with "PEACE FOREVER!" written over it. Metal Slug 2 subverts this as it shows only the "Game Over" screen after the credits, but no "PEACE FOREVER!" written over it. Metal Slug 3 onwards play this trope straighter by showing "THE END" just before the ranking screen.
• The End is a realm in Minecraft, populated by Endermen and the Enderdragon. After defeating the Enderdragon you have officially "completed" the game, though you are still free to continue playing.
  • Guess what the achievement for beating the game is called?
• The arcade game Missile Command takes these two words to a disturbing level. Instead of the traditional Game Over screen when all your cities are destroyed, you get a seizure-riffic explosion with the words on them. The programmers of the game claimed to have given themselves nightmares over this screen.
• Double subverted in Mother 3. After the final cutscene, the player is shown a black screen with the text "End?". Moving the + Control Pad, though, finds you still in control, it's just that you're in a location with nothing but black and "End?" in it. Walking around you'll find all the characters, who you can talk to, before the credits. Adding to the fun is that it's combined with Medium Awareness - it soon becomes clear you're not controlling Lucas, but yourself. Everyone will say things like, "Oh, it's Player Name! Lucas said he wanted to talk to you!" or "Hey everyone, it's Player Name! Thanks for helping out back there!" Then, after this and the credits roll, you get a real "The End" screen, showing the game's logo purely written in wood and with the Earth (as opposed to a steel ball) standing in for the O, with the word "END" written under it.
• In keeping with its cinema motifs, Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth features both "THE END" closing off its first Game Over screen, and "fin" closing off the ending as well as the second Game Over screen.
• A staple of the Pikmin series. The first game goes the extra mile by stating "The HAPPY End" if you collect all ship parts.
• In Portal 2, after GLaDOS's obligatory, cheerful song playing during the credits, there's a small movie sequence where Wheatley and the Space Core are floating around in space, and Wheatley talks about how much he regrets what he did. He ends the scene by simply saying "The end."
• Shining Force II features "Fin." after its credits. It also features an easter egg: wait on that screen long enough and a text box will pop up saying "And more...", then a secret battle will start.
• Eliminating last target in Sniper: Ghost Warrior results in displaying "THE END" sentence followed by credits.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • The Sonic Adventure games and Sonic Heroes use Fin at the end.
  • Sonic Frontiers: The True Final Boss is literally called THE END. Considering it's an Eldritch Abomination that's responsible for the destruction of the Ancients and their homeworld, not to mention being a Greater-Scope Villain for the entire Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, this is certainly a case of Names to Run Away from Really Fast.
  • Updated Re-release Sonic Origins uses "Fin" to close off the new animated ending for Sonic 3 & Knuckles.
• The End was the name of a Space Invaders-like arcade game by Konami which ended when the aliens pulled out enough blocks to spell the word "END" across the top of the screen.
• The Stanley Parable has a suitably subversive twist which fits the style of the game. Firstly, it is seen at the start of the game as the game loads as "THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER" repeated over and over - fitting for a game that has many endings that drop you back at the start of the game.
• Star Fox 64 closes its true ending credits with "THE END" after the Star Fox team flies off into the sunset. Get the bad ending, and the letters are replaced with a looming image of a laughing Andross.
• The Street Fighter: The Movie videogame adaptation (i.e. the game of the movie of the game) had a nice spin on the typical 'Game Over' screen, especially effective when it was after the end credits; rather than simply display the words, the game played the clip from the movie of Raul Julia as M. Bison shouting it, with much glee.
• All of the Super Mario Bros. main series games from Super Mario Bros. 2 onwards.
  • Most of the 3D games accompany this with a "Thank you so much for playing my game!" from either Mario or Luigi.
• This Book Is A Dungeon: The Bad Ends of its Multiple Endings use the line:
  You've perished in one of many horrible ways. Try again and seek to change your fate!
  
  The End.
  
  [Restart]
• In Undertale, "The End" is the caption for the last Save Point in the ordinary game, and it's made quite clear that the Point of No Return lies just beyond it.
• At the end of a campaign, Wing Commander finished with "The End" (with fireworks if you got the good ending), and follows it by "For now".
• Zone of the Enders plays with the trope, featuring such a screen in the game's ''bad'" ending. If you destroy all buildings and kill all civilians in the game's SOS missions, gameplay will be brutally cut off by Thunderheart dying when you're supposed to get in contact with him. ADA chastises Leo, and by extension the player, for directly causing his death, and the game ends on a screen with giant "THE END" letters and a burning, destroyed colony city in the background.

Webcomics

• The Order of the Stick: The prequel volume On the Origin of PCs says "The Beginning..." on the last page.
• Zombie And Mummy: Every installment ends with a gory, blood-dripping "END".
• A Beginner's Guide to the End of the Universe's final page (somewhat spoilery) simply magnifies the words "The End" from the title.
• In El Goonish Shive, the "Squirrel Diplomacy" storyline ends with Grace holding up a sign that says "END.".
• MS Paint Adventures: Both Problem Sleuth and Homestuck end with the narrator box saying "THE END."

Web Original

• KateModern featured an episode with the title "The End" mid-series.
• And of course, there's Teen Girl Squad and "It's over!" Initially subverted in TGS Episode 5, which features "It's almost over!" shortly before "Now it's over!".
• The Demented Cartoon Movie begins with a short introduction, transitioning from card to card with an appropriate rumbling fanfare, before finally reaching the title card for The Demented Cartoon Movie (abridged version). The very next slide reads, The end. It goes black for a few seconds, then apologizes and starts the real introduction to the movie. This is a throwback to Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
  • "HAPPY END!!!"
• Arfenhouse Teh Movie Too shows "TEH EDN!!1111!1!!!!!1" as the heading for a few seconds of real but premature credits at an anticlimactic moment halfway through the movie.
• A video meme shows a screen playing the last few wholesome seconds of Finding Dory, but this is apparently the Swedish translation, so instead of "The End" it says "Slut."

Western Animation

• Another variation is just "END". Like in the Prometheus and Bob shorts.
• The Looney Tunes sometimes had a "the end" at the end of a short and sometimes didn't, but almost always had "That's all, folks!" in the closing credits.
  • A few cartoons from the late 30s through the 40s edited as Merrie Melodies Blue Ribbon reissues in the early 50s had "The End" in Lydian typeface instead of "That's all, Folks!"
  • Guided Muscle ends with the Coyote pulling the "That's all, folks!" card across the screen.
  • Halfway through Duck Amuck, Daffy Duck demands "Let's get this picture started!"... and it irises out to a "The End" title, which Daffy pushes away while shouting "NO! NO!" in frustrated tones.
    • In Duck Amuck's Spiritual Successor short Rabbit Rampage, on the other hand, Bugs Bunny uses the end card as a last-ditch escape from the cartoon.
  • In A Ham in a Role the "That's all, folks!" card appears barely thirty seconds in. That's because it's a Show Within a Show and the protagonist is an Animated Actor filming a Warner Brothers cartoon.
• Early Cartoon Network shows had "The End" cards:
  • All the shorts in the What a Cartoon! anthology show had this.
  • Dexter's Laboratory
  • Johnny Bravo (first season only)
  • A variation with Cow and Chicken where it was just "End" (and someone else yelling "END!"). Interestingly, the I Am Weasel segments never used an end card.
  • Courage the Cowardly Dog
  • So Once Again, the Day Is Saved thanks to The Powerpuff Girls! (The End)
  • Codename: Kids Next Door, where it types "END TRANSMISSION".
  • Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends (Only in 11-minute episodes and in "One False Movie," they showed a "THE END" card cutting off Bloo's dialogue.)
  • The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack
• Cartoons with a retro theme such as those from Frederator use "The End" cards:
  • The Fairly Oddparents
  • Danny Phantom
  • My Life as a Teenage Robot
  • ChalkZone
  • T.U.F.F. Puppy
• I ♡ Arlo: The Season 1 finale "The Uncondemning" ends with this caption.
• The Inspector cartoons by De Patie Freleng Enterprises had a "Finis" title with the "I"s as two eyes.
• In Wacky Races "The End" appears above the Mean Machine in the end credits - and then falls onto the car and wrecks it, much to Muttley's amusement.
  • On rare occasions when there’s voice acting over the credits, Dastardly will mention how he’s trying to get an unfair advantage over the racers since the race starts next week- and promptly says "Drat!" when the words crush the Mean Machine.
• In The Simpsons, the "Worker and Parasite" cartoon ends with a card reading "Endut! Hoch Hech!"
• Groundbreaking 1894 French cartoon Autour d'une cabine is about swimmers at the beach. After the lovers swim away from the beach, a man in a row-boat comes out and unfurls a sail that says "LA REPRESENTATION EST TERMINEE".
• Some episodes of SpongeBob SquarePants and its spin-offs is also known to have this. The wiki even has a list of episodes that have "The End" cards.
• The Curious George animated shorts from 1980 ended with George painting "The" with his hand and "End" with his foot simultaneously on a wall, accompanied by a ten-note synth flourish.
• Uncle Grandpa plays with this: the word "Fin" appears on screen (also used as an equivalent of "The End" in some other works, such as the Sonic games above), followed by a fish with Uncle Grandpa's face. The word then points at the fish's fin and Uncle Grandpa asks if we got the joke.
• One episode of Adventure Time (also by Frederator) had a "The End" card, displayed on a typewriter, which fit in with the rest of the episode—the typewriter belonged to the main character of the episode.
• Is It Always Right to Be Right?: Schmidt's essay concludes by describing the search for common ground as "a task that never ends." Appropriately, the cartoon ends with a closing title that says "NOT THE END."
• Munro is a satirical cartoon about a four-year-old boy who is drafted and inducted into the U.S. Army. He is completely mystified by his drill instructor barking cadence during a march. At the end the drill instructor reappears and barks out "THE END."
• Both Avatar: The Last Airbender and its Sequel Series The Legend of Korra end their final episodes with the Chinese characters "劇終", literally meaning "The End", with the translation under them.
• In the final episode of Amphibia, once the credits stop rolling, a text appears written in untranslated Thai ("จบบริบูรณ้") which means "complete"/"end".

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The End ...or is it?

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