->'''Yorick:''' As far as answers go, it was vaguely unsatisfying.\\
'''Beth:''' Is there any explanation that would have been satisfactory?\\
'''Yorick:''' Um, [[SufficientlyAdvancedAliens aliens?]] I would have also accepted [[AWizardDidIt witchcraft]] or anything involving [[{{Nanomachines}} nanobots.]]
-->-- ''ComicBook/YTheLastMan''

People love a good [[DrivingQuestion mystery]], and will watch or read a story to the very end just to find out its answer. Sometimes though, for whatever reason, they don't like the answer. The fans then decide it would have been better to just leave the PlotThreads hanging, which would have given them mulch for their EpilepticTrees.

When a show [[OntologicalMystery has a premise]] that hinges on one or more big unanswered questions, fans feel there is an obligation that these questions be answered. Failure to do so leads to TheChrisCarterEffect, which can turn off fans in frustration. Likewise, not answering ''enough'' questions in a KudzuPlot alienates fans. The hard place to the above rock is that when a show, book, or movie answers a question and the answer isn't quite as epic, clever, or [[MindScrew mind shattering]] as imagined. Maybe fan expectations are just too high, or the answer is honestly unsatisfying.

It should be noted that one factor in whether fans expect a mystery to be resolved or not is how prominent and important it was made originally. ''Series/{{Lost}}'' made such a huge deal about the mystery of "the numbers" that expectations for the solution were raised to an incredible pitch. In the case of SherlockHolmes' backstory, though, it is made abundantly clear that it's irrelevant and that no clarification is to be expected.

When it is never settled how things are happening, it's MaybeMagicMaybeMundane.

It's just like how everybody wants their [[{{Shipping}} Ship]] to go through, but when it does, the result is ShippingBedDeath.

Whether a show is better served by answering all, some, or none of the questions it raises varies by viewer. It's worth noting that this trope doesn't just focus on answers that are unsatisfying, but situations where an unanswered question actually ''helped'' the narrative. As you can expect, this is therefore YMMV.

Compare CanonFodder and TheUnreveal. If the explanation is disliked because it just raises further question, then it's VoodooShark.
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!!Examples:

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder: Anime and Manga ]]

* ''Anime/ParanoiaAgent'': The reveal of the true nature of Shonen Bat and Maromi, [[spoiler: them both being a dog and a sketch from Tsukiko's childhood as well as aspects of a guilt-avoidence function she fabricated, may be considered anti-climactic.]] However, the show avoids this trope mostly by [[spoiler: leaving many aspects vague or outright unexplained/concluded in order to increase suspense.]]
* The ''HaloLegends'' shorts quickly created a BrokenBase due to their BroadStrokes regard to the canon, with later explanations only providing partial comfort. One such lose-lose situation was at the end of the ''The Package'', where John fights an Elite Major in a sword fight referred to in the subtitles as "Thel". However, ''Halo: The Cole Protocol'' indicated that Thel 'Vadamee, the Arbiter from the original trilogy, had not fought a Spartan until he had already been promoted to Zealot. Others, however, liked the irony of 'Vadamee nearly killing John only to be his ally later in the series. But that was nullified with the updated release of ''Halo: The Fall Of Reach'', which clarified that it was a different Elite fighting John named Thel '''Lodamee''. Now the canon was fixed again, but the irony was lost because John lost to a random mook.
* MÄR has this in regards to how certain plotlines were concluded in the manga, particularly the reason for Snow's existence. The anime took a different approach and offered an entirely new explanation to fit within their revised ending. This change, as well as the anime's ending in general is typically preferred by the fans, who considered the manga's ending rushed, anti-climactic and unsatisfying.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Comics ]]

* This is the reason we don't know SelfDemonstrating/TheJoker's origin in ''Franchise/{{Batman}}''. Some people take AlanMoore's [[TheKillingJoke story]] as the truth but at the end the Joker himself says that his memories of his origin [[MultipleChoicePast change from day to day]].
* The same is true of ThePhantomStranger - he has four mutually exclusive origins, all of which were published in the same issue of one series and given equal weight. One of these was also written by Moore. Meanwhile, in the New52, ThePhantomStranger now has a definitive origin.
* Invoked by Yorick at least once in ''ComicBook/YTheLastMan''.
** There is an answer that's explained to the characters, but it's the "vaguely unsatisfying" one of the page quote (unsatisfying to both the readers and the characters) and the writers give it no more weight than any of the other explanations. Of the three reasons set up in the first issue (Yorick's ring, Dr. Mann's baby and 355 with the Amulet of Helene) none of them really lasts the course.
** Says Brian K. Vaughan on the subject:
--->''I feel that there is a definitive explanation, but I like that people don't necessarily know what it is. In interviews we always said that we would tell people exactly what caused the plague. The thing was, we never said when we were going to tell. We weren't going to tell you when we were telling you, I should say. We might have told you in issue #3. There might have been something in the background that only a couple people caught. It might have been Dr. Mann's father's very detailed, scientific explanation. It might have been Alter's off-the-wall conspiracy theory. The real answer is somewhere in those 60 issues, but I prefer to let the reader decide which one they like rather than pushing it on them.''
* ''ComicBook/FiftyTwo'', despite its ability to follow through its separate storylines being credited as one of the reasons for its success, left a few plot threads dangling, particularly with regards to Booster Gold and Skeets due to an AbortedArc. The original storyline for Booster and Skeets involved them fixing the timeline of the universe, which had become broken in the recent InfiniteCrisis. To set up this story Skeets had frequent memory errors, where events as they occurred were different (sometimes drastically so) than as they had been recorded in the future. However, after these issues had been written the writers decided that this plot was too generic, and had been done too often before by other time traveling heroes, so they decided to go in a different direction and have an actual malevolent entity responsible for everything, including Skeets out-of-character actions. Eventually, the series revealed that Skeets had been infested and was being controlled by Mr. Mind, who planned to ''eat'' reality. However, though this covered why Skeets himself was evil and why several of Booster later actions were disasters, it never addressed why Skeets' earlier memory errors occurred in the first place, since they were before Mr. Mind escaped from his cocoon.
* ''AvatarTheLastAirbenderTheSearch'': ''Nobody'' likes [[spoiler:Zuko not being Ozai's son]], mainly because it blows giant holes in his entire character arc from the series.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Film ]]

* Many viewers have complained about the resolution of the various character quirks and apparent {{non sequitur}}s in M. Night Shyamalan's ''Film/{{Signs}}''.
* Part of the point of ''{{Cloverfield}}'' is that it doesn't explain anything about the monster's origins. The associated {{ARG}} and manga do, slightly, but not necessarily for the better.
* A lot of ''StarWars'' fans felt that the inclusion of midichlorians as a "cause" of the Force was an unsatisfying answer to a question no one asked. ''Webcomic/ElGoonishShive'' explains in in-depth [[http://www.egscomics.com/?date=2010-04-26 here]].
** WordOfGod's explanation that the "Balance of the Force" was not in fact the BalanceBetweenGoodAndEvil but rather the ''destruction'' of evil also got a frosty reception in some circles. Given that the Force is [[RecycledInSpace Space Taoism]], this shouldn't actually have been a surprise to anyone... if they [[GeniusBonus knew anything about Taoism]].
* This is one the biggest reasons why the director's/final cut of ''Film/BladeRunner'' is generally considered superior to the theatrical cut. The narration present in the latter removes all the ambiguity that makes the film a classic in the first place.
* One of the biggest complaints about ''HighlanderIITheQuickening'' was that it established a mythology that the immortals are aliens from a planet known as Zeist, which only serves to raise more questions. The re-edits establish them as wizards from Earth's distant past. Either way, the film is [[CanonDiscontinuity no longer considered canon]] with the rest of the series.
* Some people feel this way about the scene of Roy Neary inside the mothership from the special edition of ''CloseEncountersOfTheThirdKind''. One of these people is Creator/StevenSpielberg himself, who had never wanted to do that scene in the first place, but could only get the money to create a special edition if he included something which a marketing campaign could be hung on. Years later, Spielberg created a director's edition, which removed that scene, but kept the other special edition scenes.
* In a rare example of the FanDislikedExplanation happening ''early'' in a franchise, George Romero's Film/{{Night Of The Living Dead}} explains where the zombies are coming from early in [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness the first film.]] However, the explanation of a [[NuclearNasty "Radioactive Space Probe"]] didn't quite catch on, and later zombie media generally refuses to concretely explain the origins of the living dead.
* Some fans of the ''Franchise/{{Alien}}'' series are not happy with the backstory laid out by ''Film/{{Prometheus}}'', or lack thereof. Specifically, [[spoiler:the Proto-Xenomorph is born from a seemingly random series of events, and can't be the first Xenomorph because it's too late in the timeline and a carving of the Alien Queen was already seen earlier.]]
** It's only a step up from the ''Film/AlienVsPredator'' films, which claimed the Predators bred both humans and Xenomorphs as hunting fodder.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Literature ]]

* Isobelle Carmody's ''TheGathering'' is a young adult horror with a brilliantly foreboding sense of tension, paranoia and discord running throughout the entire story, with the imagery of things in the shadows and the gruesome image of the abattoir and the sense that ''something'' very evil has poisoned the whole city and everyone in it by literally ''poisoning'' the earth and that only these kids can repair the damage. We know that something big and terrible is going to happen, and we've got everything, including the dark, dismal skies. So the ending [[spoiler: including the explanation of what happened to the last group of people who tried, and where the entire school shows up in the abattoir in warpaint and we see the big bad being... rather less than imposing]] was a bit of a let down.
* H.P. Lovecraft's CthulhuMythos might well be unknown if not for the championing and hard work of AugustDerleth ... but Derleth's own additions to the Mythos are widely disliked. His quasi-FanFiction imposes an orderly conceptual symmetry on it, and deals in humanly recognizable categories of morality--both of which are foreign to Lovecraft's conception, and tend to "domesticate" HPL's cosmic horrors into far duller and more traditional boogeymen.
* Stephen King actually invokes this in-story at one point. In ''Franchise/TheDarkTower'''s [[Literature/TheWindThroughTheKeyhole final volume]], the story effectively ends when Roland [[spoiler:enters the eponymous Tower.]] The narrator warns the reader that he will probably find the epilogue unsatisfying, as it explains what Roland finds there.
* This is the usual reason people hated the last book in ''Literature/ThePendragonAdventure''. The whole existence of [[spoiler: Solara]] seemed to come from nowhere and some important answers (Such as who Saint Dane [[spoiler: made his promise to]]) were never answered.
* Joan Lindsay's novel ''PicnicAtHangingRock'' made its readers produce thousands of guesses about what is behind the girls' disappearances - from [[spoiler: the whole thing being the work of a rapist/kidnapper]] to [[spoiler: the headmistress molesting girls and driving them to suicide]] to [[spoiler: the rock itself trapping them inside]]. After the author's death, the eighteenth chapter with the explanation was finally released. As it turned out, [[spoiler: [[MakesAsMuchSenseInContext the girls turned into lizards]] [[GainaxEnding and got sucked into a time warp]]]]. The fans felt that it was anticlimactic and nonsensical. Even Peter Weir, the director of TheFilmOfTheBook, to whom the author showed the ending chapter, advised her not to publish it and didn't include it into a movie.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]

* The ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|Reimagined}}'' finale reveals exactly what year it is and what's up with the "head people". Did we really need to know? (On the other hand, it did however leave the nature of Kara Thrace up to viewer interpretation.)
* The new Series/DoctorWho series made several references to the "Shadow Proclamation", which was apparently some sort of law which nearly every alien species obeyed. Fans speculated on the origins and nature of the Proclamation. Near the end of Tennant's run as the Doctor, it was revealed that the Shadow Proclamation is "a posh term for Space Police". So apparently the Proclamation is not a law but an organization, or if it ''is'' a law then there is apparently an organization of the same name which enforces the law. This is a bit like being arrested by "The Constitution" or something. It didn't go over very well with fans, and the Shadow Proclamation has barely been mentioned since the Reveal.
** WordOfGod also says that averting this trope was the reason [[GreatOffscreenWar the Last Great Time War]] was never shown onscreen, as they felt that no matter how spectacular they made it the war would always seem anticlimactic to at least some fans.
*** Another good reason not to show the Time War is that it might confirm that [[EnsembleDarkhorse certain popular Time Lords, or other popular characters last seen on Gallifrey]] really were KilledOffForReal. By not showing it or not giving away too much about it, it remains possible that these fan favorites [[HesJustHiding are just hiding.]] In the new series 3, [[spoiler: TheMaster was confirmed to be doing this.]]
* ''{{Firefly}}'': "The Shepherd's Tale" comic was dedicated to exploring the MysteriousPast of Shepherd Book, [[CutShort whose origins were never revealed on the show itself]]. However, many fans disliked the story it offered -- that he was a Browncoat spy who quickly rose into the higher ranks of the Alliance military -- and instead preferred the {{Fanon}} theory that he was a former Operative.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Western Animation ]]

* One episode of ''WesternAnimation/{{Gargoyles}}'' had the mysterious character of Titania whisper something in Fox's ear - whatever it was, it caused the latter character to gasp in shock. Fans clambered for an answer, but GenreSavvy creator Greg Wiesman has said on his blog that although he knows exactly what was said, he is reluctant to share it, considering the interest is so high that the answer will inevitably come as a disappointment.
* Technically fitting under "Comics", but... ''ComicBook/AvatarTheLastAirbenderTheSearch'' is shaping up to be this; while it does have Zuko finding Ursa at last, there's the plot-twist that [[spoiler: seemingly confirms Zuko isn't Ozai's son, but the son of her original lover, Ikem. Which completely renders pointless a lot of Zuko's character development and breaks the original "you are not your bloodline, your family does not define who you have to be" aesop from the animated series]].
* At least some ''TheLegendOfKorra'' fans didn't like the explanation that [[VisionaryVillain Amon]]'s ability to [[BroughtDownToNormal take away bending]] was actually [[spoiler:Bloodbending]], for various reasons. (Game-breaker, makes no sense, less interesting than his fake explanation, etc.) That being said, a lot of people seem fine with it.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Video Games ]]

* The official timeline of ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda'' series. One of the biggest fanon debates in video game history was explained [[AllThereInTheManual in an official art book]] titled ''Hyrule Historia'', confirming that the series had not two, but THREE parallel timelines (all of them originated in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime''), which seemed like quite the WriterCopOut instead of providing a much stronger explanation. Saying that a lot, if not most of fans got disappointed with the explanation would be an understatement.
* This was one of the main criticisms of ''VideoGame/{{Condemned}} 2: Bloodshot''; DoingInTheWizard didn't exactly help.
* VideoGame/{{Touhou}} actually runs on this: the game developer, ZUN, decided to leave most canon details vague and background/personalities open to detail, since he found that the openness to interpretation of the games is what attracted such a large fanbase. Even then, people throw out a lot of canon material, or disregard it completely, and, of course, fans will fight one another over interpretation.
* Likewise, one of the many reasons ''VideoGame/StarControl 3'' is considered FanonDiscontinuity by many is because it answered all the major cosmic mysteries brought up in ''Star Control 2'', in an {{infodump}} that takes four Website/YouTube videos to cover. And most of the answers are the very definition of FridgeLogic.
* The [[BigBad Guardian's]] true nature revealed in ''VideoGame/UltimaIX'' was rather underwhelming (after several games and almost 10 years of build-up), as well as somewhat inconsistent with the previously established story.
* One of the main complaints of ''VideoGame/TalesOfVesperia'' was how some of the plot threads were either given haphazard resolutions or dropped entirely. Most however, such as [[spoiler:Yuri's vigilante actions,]] were given decent resolutions.
* ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerTiberianTwilight'' set out to resolve the many questions surrounding Kane, but it's agreed by most of the fanbase that it simply, and frustratingly, created ''more'' questions.
** It ''did'' confirm that Kane [[spoiler:was an alien being trapped on Earth for the past several millenia]].
* For some fans ''MetalGearSolid4'' was a huge case of this.
* The ending of ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'' caused uproar among fans, who started not just a petition, but raised $80,000 in only a few days for charity to get Bioware to change it. Much of this was caused by a lack of explanation of the events of the ending, but many disliked the explanation for the existence of the reapers. [[spoiler:Which is that they are synthetics created to wipe out organics. In order to prevent the organics from making synthetics that will wipe out organics. That being said, the Reapers don't consider what they do to organics to be "wiping them out."]] The Extended Cut DLC went some way to appeasing the fandom, by showing in more detail the consequences of whatever decision Shepard made, as well as including new scenes to each ending so that they were no longer identical as before. It, along with the later Leviathan DLC, also revealed that [[spoiler:the AI that created the Reapers was acting out a ZerothLawRebellion caused by flawed instructions from its creators,]] which made the explanation a bit more palatable.
* Fans of the "Striaton Trio are really the Shadow Triad" fanon were ''not'' happy when ''VideoGame/PokemonBlack2AndWhite2'' jossed that theory, to the point where some fans insist that the Striaton triplets are just lying.
** Fans also didn't like TheReveal that [[spoiler: N really ISN'T Ghetsis' son. To add insult to injury, Ghetsis found N in the wild as he was ConvenientlyAnOrphan, making it a little underwhelming that Ghetsis [[NoEndorHolocaust wouldn't steal N from his real parents]] or treat his own flesh and blood as [[MoralEventHorizon horribly]] as he did.]]

[[/folder]]
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