The Stinger - Television Tropes & Idioms

In Kannazuki No Miko, watching through the credits reveals that Chikane, who sacrificed her life for Himeko's in the Grand Finale, is indeed reborn and meets Himeko at an unspecified time later.
In Shattered Angels (aka Kyoshiro To Towa No Sora), the Spiritual Successor to Kannamiko of sorts, a similar scene reveals that Kyoshiro and Setsuna found the reborn Kuu many years after the events of the series.
After the credits of the fourth Naruto movie there's a scene where Shion decides to continue her line of miko, and Naruto accidentally agrees to sire her children.
- Also, in the credits of the first Naruto movie, there is a scene involving new Daimyo of the Land of Snow Yukie Fujikaze revealing to Naruto and the gang the script her next movie... which happens to be the film adaptation of Jiraiya's Icha Icha Paradise, which Kakashi orders tickets for in Episode 101.
Every single episode, movie, and OVA of Detective Conan has one of these.
All four Inuyasha movies have these as well, the third movie's Stinger also resolving how Inu-Yasha still has his kotodama rosary in subsequent episodes of the anime despite it breaking into pieces and flying off earlier in the movie.
The Cowboy Bebop episode "Jupiter Jazz, part II" replaced the normal credits music "The Real Folk Blues" with different music ("Space Lion" by The Seatbelts), and the usual "See you space cowboy" with "Do you have comrade?"
- Another episode ends with Andy deciding not to be a storybook cowboy (since Spike was a better one). The final scene shows Spike staring in disbelief as he rides by in full samuraii regalia. The final line this time is "See you... space samuraii"
The credits of the last episode of Solty Rei show scenes from the series in "old film" sepia tone, and are followed by the true ending: Roy and Yuto go into space and find Solty, who has preserved herself for several years with her energy shield.
The first episode of the Tales Of Symphonia OVA has a scene where Colette kisses Lloyd. The fourth episode has a few token lines from Lloyd then a sequel hook.
The Spring and Summer OVAs of Mahou Sensei Negima throw in one last joke regarding a seemingly dropped side plot after the credits. The former has the Chupacabra some of the cast were hunting watching their plane fly away while the latter shows Asuna's last attempt to fend off Hakase's out-of-control bathing robot.
In Real Drive, you see Minamo rushing off to meet a rejuvenated Haru stepping out of the sea.
After the "Preview of the next episode" of every Steam Detectives, a still frame of a completely random scene from the episode (totally regardless of its importance in the plot) appears for a few second, with some cheesy music.
Rurouni Kenshin: Seisōhen ends with Kenji (dressed like Kenshin) walking with a young girl beneath the cherry blossoms, saying that they will live happily together.
In Samurai Champloo Episode 22, the end theme plays through most of the way normally, then begins to slow down and the credits are interrupted by Shige leaping out of his grave.
The ending credits to the anime L/R: Licensed By Royalty shows Jack and Rowe driving off on another assignment after Rowe was supposedly killed by the revenge-seeking son of the Big Bad.
Code Geass R2 has C.C. talking to the supposedly dead Lelouch, leading many fans to hope he was alive. Word Of God says this is not a stinger.
.hack//G.U. Trilogy ends with a stinger conversation between Pi and Yata. It seems to be connected to the upcoming .hack//Link PSP game.

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Betcha nobody ever expected to see this one in a comic book (Unless you grew up during the Bronze Age), but there it is: Green Lantern crossover event Sinestro Corps War ended with one of the main villains, nearly dead and utterly defeated, thrown into space. Then, with credits appearing between the panels, we see where he lands... and things have suddenly gotten much, much worse for our unknowing heroes. The final page of the book is a teaser for the sequel event, coming in 2009.
Don Rosa supplied one extra page as an epilogue for the hardcover versions of The Quest For Sampo, his Finnish-themed story. In it, the Grim Reaper returns Scrooge McDuck's top hat and offers to allow him to take his fortune to the afterlife in exchange for a hundred dollars. Scrooge kicks him out without even considering it.
- The Reaper actually came to give Scrooge something, but Scrooge spoiled his chances by asking the wrong question. Then Scrooge himself tried to ask how he could take something with him to the afterlife, but considered $100 too steep a price for such information.
The final page in an issue of Rising Stars is a clairvoyant sitting by himself. When you flip the page, there's a bunch of people drawn very lightly, speaking backwards. If you go back to the previous page and hold it up to the light, you see that the figures on the back page are actually GHOSTS talking to the character in the chair.

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In the 2008 Iron Man movie, Nick Fury (played by Samuel L Jackson) talks with Tony Stark about the "Avenger Initiative".
- And likewise, in the 2008 Hulk movie Tony Stark shows up to discuss with General Ross about a certain team that's getting together. Although it's not After The Credits — just the final scene of the movie.
  - Now we just gotta get Thor in there...
In Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, the Silver Surfer is seen floating in Space after the destruction of Galactus, and suddenly he opens his eyes.
Pirates Of The Caribbean. Yes, all three of them. The first is a sequel hook involving the monkey re-cursing itself, thus allowing the plot of the following movies, the second is really just a gag, but the third technically resolves a plot point by showing us a "ten years later" with what happens with Elizabeth and Will after he becomes tied to the Flying Dutchman. Including a ten-year-old son, despite the ten-year separation and having had supposedly only one day or less to themselves.
The third X-Men film has one of those Not Quite Dead examples.
- X-Men Origins: Wolverine had, depending on your screening, either a now-amnesiac Logan in a bar, "drinking to remember" or the living disembodied head of Deadpool In Name Only, having gained his mouth back and apparently, the actual Deadpool's Medium Awareness too. There was also General Stryker getting arrested, but everyone got that one.
Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: after the credits, the wardrobe opens, light shines through it, and a lion's roar can be heard.
The Simpsons Movie had one that was a Sequel Hook, with Maggie's second word: "Sequel?"
- Also a bit of Lampshade Hanging. "C'mon dad, let's go! I've been holding it since they put the dome over the town!"
Obligatory Buffy The Vampire Slayer example: The Movie features one of the vampires (who'd taken a long time to die) continuing to die at a break in the credits. It also features news interviews with the cast while the credits are running.
The Matrix Reloaded showed a trailer for The Matrix Revolutions.
At the end of the credits of The Triplets of Belleville, the guy from whom the protagonist rented a boat is seen, still waiting for it to be returned.
- Similarly, there's a clip at the very end of Airplane! showing the guy who got into Ted Striker's abandoned taxi at the start of the movie, saying, "I'll give him another twenty minutes!"
  - And in The Sequel!, the hijacker asks for his bomb back.
Scary Movie features a gag after the credits. It involves a vacuum cleaner.
After the credits in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Ferris tells the audience to go home because the movie is over.
- Same in The Sweetest Thing.
- During the credits themselves, we see a scene involving Principal Rooney getting a lift on a school bus.
- The same Ferris Bueller footage was re-used at the end of She's Having a Baby, also by John Hughes.
- The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie also had a similiar stinger.
According to That Other Wiki, one of the earliest movies to have a post-credits scene was The Muppet Movie. Sweetums breaks through the theater wall hoping to see the movie that has just finished airing...
Subverted by — what else — Monty Python And The Holy Grail, which features no ending credits whatsoever; it cuts abruptly to a black screen and plays repetitive organ music for two minutes and forty seconds. It's an Ingmar Bergman pastiche. What did you expect to happen after they sacked the people responsible for writing the subtitles, those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked, and the directors of the firm hired to continue the credits after the other people had been sacked?
Idiocracy: Rita's pimp emerges from a suspended animation capsule to find her.
After the credits for Constantine end, there's a scene with Constantine visiting Chas Kramer's grave. Chas appears in "halfbreed" form (half-angel with wings), then rockets up into the sky.
Cloverfield has a mildly disappointing example: after sitting through the credits, the audience is treated to a two-second, crackling, indecipherable audio clip that, when played backwards, apparently says "It's still alive!" And it was apparently nothing but Flame Bait, since the Word Of God later stated that yes, the monster is dead.
After the end of the story version of Cirque du Soleil's Alegria, it shows the director standing on a street corner, and he says, in a perfect quote from The Princess Bride: "He said to wait right here; he said he would be back; I'm not leaving."
At the end of the credits to the film Aliens, a facehugger can be heard scuttling around.
In the 2004 Dawn Of The Dead remake, a last segment is interspersed with the credits, showing (through video camera footage) the surviving main characters traveling on the boat they escaped to at the end of the film. They find a zombified head gnashing away in a rowboat, struggle with the lack of food, potable water and gas, before finally reaching their island destination. Unfortunately, they take one step onto shore and are chased back towards their boat by a rampaging horde of the undead.
- This entire segment was belatedly filmed and added to the final print after preview audiences complained about the film's original abrupt ending.
The Austin Powers trilogy of films have all done this, to an extreme in "The Spy Who Shagged Me". Post-credit scenes show Scott Evil on the Jerry Springer Show learning who his real mother is, Austin catching another time-displaced version of himself sleeping with Felicity Shagwell, and Wafa Mustafa (played by Will Ferrell) still yelling for help at the bottom of a cliff.
In Lethal Weapon 3, a post-credit sequence shows Riggs and Murtaugh rushing out to answer another bomb threat.
The Producers (the 2005 musical version) has a short musical number after the credits, thanking the audience for coming and telling them to get lost. The same song appeared in the stage version during the curtain call.
James And The Giant Peach has a rather bizarre sequence in which some kid plays a mechanical carnival game wherein he controls a rhino which attempts to butt spinning copies of the titular hero's horrific aunts; a successful hit causes the target's head to pop off.
The 2007 Transformers movie has three of these, all during the end credits rather than after; two involve a television interview with the Witwicky family, and one shows Starscream escaping into space.
In the He Man live-action movie Masters of the Universe, Skeletor's head is shown popping out of some strange pool of pink liquid and shouting "I'll be back!". Given that there was no sequel and Word Of God says that Skeletor fell to his death, it's not quite clear why they put that in.
- There are even people who refer to The Stinger as "The Skeletor" because of this.
Zack and Miri Make a Porno has an extra scene that interrupts the ending credits.
The Sword And The Sorcerer promised Talon would be back in Tales Of The Ancient Empire. Amazingly enough, 26 years later, apparently he will be!
The 2007 Alvin And The Chipmunks ended with the Big Bad Ian Hawke jobless and penniless, trying to recapture the success he had with the Chipmunks by trying to get other animals such as squirrels to sing. The upcomming "squeakquel" will apparently see this search pay off with the Chipmunks' Distaff Counterpart group, the Chipettes.
Delightfuly subverted in the Sci Fi Original Kaw where the reveal that the killer birds aren't dead comes immediately before the credits (they attack the hero as he walks into his bedroom).
There's a tiny one a few seconds into the ending credits of The Red Shoes, an Asian horror film about the horrible things ordinary women would do for a fabulous pair of shoes.
In the Matthew Broderick version of Godzilla, one egg was not destroyed. But it's the final scene, not after the credits. This provided the setup for Godzilla The Series, which was generally thought of much more highly than the film.
Batman Returns, Catwoman is alive somehow. Again, final scene.
- Arguably less a hook than an alleviation of the near-Downer Ending.
The Street Fighter movie, M. Bison is alive (too bad Raul Julia isn't)
The end credits of Jerry Maguire gets interrupted by Rod Tidwell's first Reebok's commercial.
There's still someone trying to kill Jennifer Love Hewitt after I Still Know What You Did Last Summer.
Repo The Genetic Opera has an extra scene right after the initial end credits. The script writer is kind enough to include himself as a character and point out the impending epilogue in song.
Team America World Police had a stinger as part of a musical Credits Montage: a song not heard in the movie, revealing the interplanetary aspect of Kim Jong-Il's plot.
Daredevil has a scene with Bullseye after the credits.
The credits of The Phantom Menace involve Anakin's theme, which occasionally hints at the Imperial March, and end with a bit of Vader Breath.
Half Past Dead shows one of the inmates talking to his girlfriend.
Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins has him interviewing his family.
Adventures In Babysitting has a scene with one of the villains still trapped on the top of a building where the heroes left him.
Con Air showed Garland Greene having a drink at the Craps tables.

Dealer: "New shooter coming out, new shooter. Does the new shooter feel lucky? Well, does he?"

Garland: "Yes, yes he does". ("Sweet Home Alabama" by Lynrd Skynrd plays.)

Disturbing Behavior. One of the "Blue Ribbons" is now a student-teacher in an inner city high school.
In Stealth, the AI that went haywire, killed people, and blew stuff up performs a Heroic Sacrifice in the end to save the hero and redeems itself. After the credits, the AI lights up again amongst the rubble. It's not dead after all, and it may be back for more malice!
The end credits of Wild Things feature a series of scenes that show the story behind the story of the film, explaining how the entire plot really worked. Some of them are hilarious (intentionally).
After the credit for Ernest Saves Christmas, the two delivery warehouse workers are shown arguing about whether one of the letters on a label for a giant box is an E or an F. As one of them insists it reads "E. Bunny" two huge pink rabbit ears smash through the top of the box...
At the end of the 1980 Flash Gordon movie Ming the Merciless has died, the day has been saved, and all is well. The words 'The End' appear, but an sinister laugh is heard as a familiar hand picks up the ring, and a question mark appears after the words...

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Many mass-market paperback versions of novels put a teaser for the sequel (usually its prologue or first chapter) or a separate book by the same author and/or in the same setting in a separate section after the end of the book.
Several novels in The Culture end with an epilogue which is generally humorous/uplifting even if the end of the novel proper was bittersweet and/or followed Banks' "trademark".
Daniel Silva's Gabriel Allon novels tend to have epilogue's in which Mossad tracks down and assassinates any villain who escaped by the end of the novel proper (e.g. in one case, a character who had planned explosions is himself mailed a bomb which kills him.

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Red Vs Blue, Season 3 — at the end of the credits on the DVD Vic appears, saying, "I understand you're enjoying the sweet music and all, but the DVD's over. Go home, dude, live your life."

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The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy had one for a number of the radio episodes.

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Mystery Science Theater 3000 had a clip from that episode's featured movie, usually the silliest bit of acting or dialogue from the film. Ridiculous laughter was a common feature.
- This started during the second Comedy Central season, the third of the sho's production counting KTMA.
- It was always preceded by a blaring chord, leading some to call the entire sequence the "Blang".
The new Battlestar Galactica often featured bonus scenes in this manner, often after the official airing slot was over therefore thwarting many efforts to record it for later viewing.
Home Improvement generally featured bloopers.
After The Credits for The Muppet Show, Waldorf and Statler, two crotchety old muppets in the balcony seats, would make insulting jokes about the show for a few seconds.
- And the series of YouTube videos all ended showing that they were also watching and doing their thing.
Cirque's television series Solstrom had stingers after each episode's credits. They generally served as one last joke involving a character or two, but the Grand Finale also revealed that the matronly woman who turned up in each of the previous 12 shows is the observer/narrator's mom.
Scrubs is doing blooper/comedy type Stingers as of its current (possibly final) season.
The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy did this for at least one episode of the TV series.
Defunct British Soap Opera Crossroads used these (in its original incarnation), with a very brief coda (usually just a line or two) inbetween the end credits and the Vanity Plate. This type of stinger was later resurrected by the unrelated teen-aimed soap Hollyoaks.
Frasier had a dialogue-less stinger at the end of each episode, under the nonsensical closing theme.
VeggieTales always had an "A pop" after the credits where the 'A' in Big Idea would sort of bounce with a sound effect taken from the episode.
The "Moment of Zen" at the end of The Daily Show, usually a slightly longer clip from one of the day's stories but sometimes just a random funny video.

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In the original Sonic The Hedgehog game (1991), Robotnik would be shown juggling the Chaos Emeralds if you didn't collect them all. If you had collected them all, he'd be shown foiled, jumping up and down in a fit of rage. This style of stinger has appeared a number of times in the series since.
Wonder Boy In Monster World (1991) showed the not-dead final boss flying through space.
- Monster World 4 did this at the very end of the game.
All of the Halo games:
- Halo's credits cut to a view of the floating wreckage of the Halo, with a bright blue light in the distance, which quickly grows to become 343 Guilty Spark, the Big Bad for the second half of the game, flying into the distance.
- Halo 2 cut to a view of the Space-Zombie-infested space station where you had to leave your AI sidekick Cortana behind as you flew away to save Earth, and shows the space-zombie hive mind begin interrogating her
- Halo 3's campaign ended with a memorial service in honour of the main character, who is believed to be dead after the intergalactic portal he was passing through closed and cut his ship in half. If you stayed for the credits, though, you would find out that he is not actually dead. He's just stranded in half a ship in middle of nowhere. He climbs into a cryo-pod and goes to sleep to await rescue. The game added a further stinger if completed on the Hardest difficulty, in which the main character's half-a-ship is seen drifting towards an alien planet, which a bright blue sun reveals is covered by a huge city.
- Halo Wars keeps the tradition going. If you beat the game on the hardest difficulty, after the credits a brief audio clip shows up where Serina wakes the captain up and tells him "something has happened.
The two Kingdom Hearts games for PlayStation 2 had teasers for sequels that could be watched if you achieved Hundred Percent Completion. Kingdom Hearts Chain Of Memories had a variation on New Game Plus, in the form of an extra story that could be played once the main quest was completed.
The Metroid Prime games had stingers that could be viewed if you got all the items.
- Metroid Prime: A dark hand jutting out of a phazon pool, Samus's phazon suit forming into Dark Samus.
- Metroid Prime 2: Dark Samus reforming in space from particles.
- Metroid Prime 3: Samus leaving in her spaceship, before the camera pans out and shows another unidentified ship following her.
Every Metal Gear Solid ends with a phone call after the credits, on a black screen, hinting at whatever big conspiracy was really going on. The Metal Gear games had actual scenes — one involving Big Boss revealing he was really alive, and the other showing the supporting characters confirming the MacGuffin was real while the main character leaves without warning.
- In the original Metal Gear Solid, Revolver Ocelot is revealed to have been working for the President of the US and manipulating the villains for their cause. The remake adds that the President is a third clone from the experiment that produced Snake and Liquid.
- In Sons of Liberty Snake and Otacon discover that the members of a shadowy conspiracy (or at least the people with those names) had been dead for over 100 years.
- In Snake Eater, it is revealed that GRU Major Ocelot is a triple agent (working for the KGB and the CIA), the US government obtained the Mac Guffin (which happened to be a very large amount of money), and the microfilm Naked Snake (later Big Boss) apparently lost to an enemy agent was fake.
- In Portable Ops, after assassinating his former employer, the DCI, Ocelot retrieves the remainder of the Philisopher's Legacy and reports back to his new employer, the founder of the Patriots, whom we find out in the next game is none other than Zero, Big Boss's former CO.
- And Guns of the Patriots takes the cake, with a full scene that interrupts the end credits and effectively turns the credit that just came up as it happens into a Boss Subtitle. In it, Big Boss turns out to still be alive, and explains the last hanging threads of the series, and turns the Bittersweet\Downer Ending into a happy one.
The Syphon Filter series.
- Part 1: Aramov was working for the Agency as well, and she aint brunette!
- Part 2: Secretary of State Vince Hadden has been watching Gabe & friends.
- Part 3: Aramov has acquired 1 batch of Syphon Filter
The video game Portal has a Stinger as the music played during the credits.
- Still alive.
One minute after the end of the credits of Mega Man X, Sigma's face appears on the screen and he swears revenge. Which we all know by now, though.
- Mega Man Zero 2 post-credits has someone ordering Omega to act; the speaker was Big Bad of Mega Man Zero 3 onwards, Dr. Weil.
Taking the "Easy Path" to Venom in Star Fox 64, and beating it as such, would result in Andross' face fading in after the credits, complete with his ominous laugh... confirming the player's suspicion that the robot he just fought was not the real Andross after all.
- Alternately taking the "Hard Path" to Venom, finding the path to the "Real Andross" and defeating Andross' true Giant Space Brain form you are joined by Fox's presumed dead father during the final escape from the base.
Lunar: Eternal Blue has a bit of a Downer Ending because the hero Did Not Get The Girl, much to the annoyance of the player. However, beating the game and watching the long ending cutscene and credits unlocks the Epilogue mode, which continues the story and fixes everything.
System Shock 2 — Directly after smacking down the Big Bad, we cut to an escape pod from the Von Braun. Someone is recording a log,and now that the ship's safe, they're going to turn back. He mentions that his girlfriend has been acting strangely ever since they left. Said girlfriend starts speaking, stepping into shot with her hair waving like SHODAN's leads and her voice becoming more and more distorted and computer-like... fade to a flash of SHODAN's face as she laughs.
Call Of Duty 4 has a bonus level after the credits.
- Call of Duty 2 features a joint American-British mission to rescue the captured Captain Price going on behind the credits.
Dreamfall features a cryptic flashback scene after the credits, where Mannie Chavez (who is actually Cortez, the Mentor Figure from the original The Longest Journey and a dragon in human form) helping Brian Westhouse (who easily qualifies as the most ambiguous character of the game) reach a Tibetan monastery though a heavy blizzard. The situation is worsened by the fact that it was Westhouse's stay in the monastery that allowed him to travel to the parallel world, which kicked off the Start Of Darkness described in the game.
Killer7 has two. First, after the credits roll, an epilogue chapter called "Lion" is shown. After completing that, a scene plays that completes the Book Ends and shows that Harmon and Kun Lan's personal war will never end.
After the credits in the game Predator: Concrete Jungle, executives from the newly-formed Weyland-Yutani Corporation discuss the fate of Big Bad Lucretia Borgia, who had stalked the title character for most of the game... and who has now been turned into a half-organic computer named MOTHER.
After collecting all the secret reports in The World Ends With You, beating the final boss again will give you a very short scene after the credits: Joshua and Hanekoma watching Neku and company's heartwarming reunion in the Realground. Hanekoma tells Joshua something to the effect of "it's their own lives — they can live as they want." Josh is so pissed off by this point that he simply flies off. Cue Hanekoma spreading his Angel wings, saying "Some people just can't take 'no' for an answer," and flying after Josh.
After the epilogue text finally scrolls off the screen in Castlevania II: Simon's Quest (it's pretty slow-scrolling), you see Dracula's hand clawing up out of his grave.
- Interestingly, this only happens in the Good Ending.
Hitman: Blood Money has the credits roll during 47's funeral, at which point you can twiddle the analog sticks and wake up to kill everyone and see a cutscene where 47 leaves the country.
Almost every Nippon Ichi game (Disgaea, Makai Kingdom, Phantom Brave, Soul Nomad And The World Eaters) ending will have one following the credits sequence, often showing what the events prior to the credits led to. A few noticeable examples is the good ending of Makai Kingdom (As suspected, the Corn was a fake — The One is actually revealed to be... Cordelia. Mickey and Dryzen are unaware of this, which is completely ludicrous seeing how they're fused together) and the reveal following the end of Soul Nomad And The World Eaters (Gig turns out to be fine — being The Grim Reaper, he simply had himself reborn following his Heroic Sacrifice).
Zoids Legacy has a very cliched Stinger where the main character and his Mysterious Waif fulfill their promise to meet each other even though the memories of their adventures were erased. The poor translation makes it quite cute and the scene is actually remarkably powerful for a standard Stinger.
Half Life 2 has Lamarr, Dr. Kleiner's pet headcrab, drop out of a ventilation shaft after the credit roll and leap at the camera in typical headcrab fashion, along with the sound of Dr. Kleiner searching for the animal from somewhere off-screen.
- Episode 1 had a trailer for Episode 2.
The post-credits stinger of ICO returns control to the player for a very short Playable Epilogue, which turns the Bittersweet Ending into a happy one.
The Legend Of Zelda: Link's Awakening on the original Game Boy, if you managed to complete the game without dying once, after the end credits you see Marin incarnated as a seagull. Looks like she got her wish, after all.
- And don't forget, in The Legend Of Zelda Phantom Hourglass, when Link is back on the pirate ship with the crew, he finds the Phanton Hourglass in his pocket, and Linebeck's ship on the horizon, proving that the adventure was more than All Just A Dream.
Super Mario RPG had a music-box version of the World 1-1 theme from the original Super Mario Bros.
In Donkey Kong Country, in the final battle against K. Rool. At some point, he will lie defeated on the ground, while faux credits roll (note that the names of the "staff members" are those of the game's regular enemies), then, after "The End?" appears on screen, K. Rool will suddenly get up and unexpectedly jump towards the player.
One sentence from Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth chooses death. Granted, this comes as part of an epilogue for every character that appears at the end of every PW game, but still...
Gears Of War 2 finishes the end credit with a title card while a scratchy radio messages plays out. "This is Adam Fenix. IS anyone out there? What have you done?!?
Mother and its sequel EarthBound have a scene after the credits setting up the sequel. Mother sees someone at a phone mentioning that "something new has come up", while Earth Bound has The Dragon's little brother show up and deliver a message to the protagonist.
In the original Doom (1993), after finally battling your way through three episodes of hell-spawn, you're returned to Earth. Nice, home Earth, complete with a pastoral graphic and peaceful music. Then the music turns into a Last Note Nightmare, while the camera pans to show a city on fire and a rabbit's head impaled on a stick.
In the best ending of Aquaria, after the ending credits, Naija winds up swimming through a cavern devoid of enemies, eventually finding herself kidnapped by her mother, Mia. The ending then moves on to a possibility for a sequel.
Megaman Battle Network 3 has a stinger after the ending credits, revealing that Megaman was still alive after his supposed self-sacrifice to save Lan, and Dr. Hikari found him in the remains of Alpha and reunites him with Lan.
- It's also done immediately after the credits in Megaman Battle Network 2, when the real Bass appears and hunts down a clone of himself, then mentions something about Dr. Wily secretly manipulating the game's villains and producing clones of him behind his back. In a massive subversion, this not only helps set up the next game, but the area in which the cutscene takes place is actually the game's Bonus Dungeon with Bonus Bosses that will indirectly answer some of your questions. You can unravel part of the mystery yourself while waiting for 3!
In Tales Of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, earning the best ending will show the stinger after the credits, where Emil and Marta are reunited, and Emil and Marta both earn a title for use in a New Game Plus.
Naturally, like everything else in the game, I Wanna Be The Guy's stinger can kill you.
Contact has a stinger that, for some reason, only appears some of the time.
Final Fantasy VII Had this in the form of a 500-years-later epilogue: Red XIII is seen running along side two cubs of his own race to look upon an abandoned and ruined Midgar, followed by the laughter of children. This same scene is used as the opening of Advent Children, sans the giggles.
In Final Fantasy VIII, after the end FMV descends into the surreal, comes back out again, and remains coy thereafter as to whether or not Squall survived being lost in time, a final FMV sequence shows him on Garden's balcony with Rinoa.
Final Fantasy X features pyreflies floating around, cutting to Tidus awakening and floating somewhere, and then swimming to the surface. This clip was later integrated into one of Final Fantasy X-2's Multiple Endings.
Tenchu 2, after "winning" the Tatsumaru missions. SUZAKU IS ONIKAGE!
Utawarerumono has a lengthy Where Are They Now Stinger split over multiple scenes after the credits.
The Bionic Commando sequel which came out in 2009 features this in the end credits which is a morse code. The first line of the morse code gets translated mentioning that the plan of the bad guys had been disabled, awaiting for further instructions. The second code gets however interrupted by the screen glitching up and returning you to the title screen.
- It's been translated by fans, and is a German-language message discussing beginning "Phase 2" of Project Albatross.
WWE SmackDown: Here Comes the Pain had one of these after sitting through the end credits, where you got a short, live-action video with John Cena rapping about the game.
Assassins Creed averts this, by placing an unexpected interactive bit after the last mission. When the player finishes the last mission, there's a cutscene, you get a nice big fat game-complete Achievement (in Xbox 360 at least), and... no credits. Using Sense, you discover weird markings with hints to come all over the Animus laboratory, then you find a really big one... and then the credits roll. And you get another Achievement for just watching the credits.
Dragon Quest VIII had an option to save after the credits were done rolling, followed by a shot of a dais on top of a mountain, where an image would appear. Players could load the save, which would bring them to just before the final battle. Finding and examining the aforementioned dais would transport the party to a new dungeon, and a new sidequest at the end of it. Completing the sidequest then beating the final boss again would change the ending very slightly (namely, the hero gets to marry Princess Medea rather than simply running off with her).
Valkyrie Profile has voiced soliloquies by Lezard and Brahms - but you have to wait several minutes after the credits to hear them.
In Final Fantasy IX, entering a code while "The End" shows on screen allows you to play a game of blackjack.
The Family Computer version of Contra has a secret epilogue where the aliens swerve vengeance on the heroes. It was removed in the NES version.
In Secret Of Evermore, after defeating the robotic butler Big Bad, a scene at the end of the credits shows that he's been repaired by his creator. He appears to be simply robotic until the scientist leaves the room, and then he smirks and laughs evilly during the closing fade.
- If you're truly hardcore in dealing with this trope, another 29 minutes with "The End?" on screen will net you an extra "cryptic" credit and a blank screen.
- Another 5 minutes after that will give the final message, "It's Bill's fault," before resetting back to the title screen
The credits in Grandia II are actually playable! You control each character one at a time and can talk to people. This credits sequence serves as the game's denouement.
Tales of the Abyss ends with Luke turning bright and disappearing during an act that is supposed to kill him. After you go through the credits, a rather heartwarming anime cutscene plays, revealing that no, Luke didn't die- he simply merged with Asch, thus, apparently, no longer being a replica, but the original himself.
The Legend Of Kyrandia: Hand Of Fate: Oh, hey, it's the petrified Malcom from the first game. Oh, hey, lightning storm.
In Black And White 2, both the core game and the expansion pack have these. After the credits in the core game, it directly answers the Elephant In The Living Room of "Where Are The Other Gods" - by having your victory over your enemy be so drastic that its few survivors were able to make a pure-enough prayer to create another God.
- In the expansion pack, just after defeating the God of The Undead, the camera pans over to a bare spot of ground, and you see a skeleton rise up and chuckle. Cut to credits. Wait until after the credits, however, and you see that either your divine hand (or someone with a flaming arrow) had noticed the skeleton and blew it up.
In Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Red/Blue Rescue Team and Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky, it's only after the credits roll that you see your hero returns and reunites with their partner. While you'll probably already be expecting something like this, given the games' ample post-game content, they still milk it for all it's worth.
Towards the end of the credits of Mirror's Edge, the song playing ("Still Alive"... no, not that one) temporarily fades out to a news cast reporting Faith and her sister as criminals whose whereabouts are unknown.

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Cartoon Network originals are known for these (normally during the credits):
- Chowder's stinger (which occurs during the credits) manages to also incorporate a "puppet mode" Art Shift while it's at it. Of course, there's the Credits Pushback problem...
- The second season finale of Transformers Animated had a stinger featuring Megatron and Starscream, stranded in space, bickering with each other, which was apparently entirely improvised. To the annoyance of the show's fans, the Canadian "host" of the network started talking over them as soon as the show's credits rolled and everyone had to wait until the American version aired to find out what exactly they were saying.
- The Grim Adventures Of Billy And Mandy started doing these during the credits in later seasons
  - At the very end of the end credits is a garbled, demonic-sounding sound clip. Playing it backwards reveals it to be creator Maxwell Atoms saying, "No, no, no! These are the end credits! You're playing it backwards!"
  - Billy & Mandy's Big Boogey Adventure had one after the credits where Fred Fredburger is revealed to have taken over the world in two weeks time.
- Megas XLR throws in jokes or resolves minor plot issues during the credits of each episode.
- Ed Edd N Eddy's Big Picture Show had one after the credits, where Jonny and Plank were plotting their revenge, only to realize that the series was now over. This was squashed to the side and voiced-over to make room for ads overseas, so fans had to wait until the American airing to figure out what was going on.
Every episode of The Venture Brothers TV show has a quick joke after the credits, except the first half of the Season 3 finale, presumably for spoiler reasons.
WALL-E follows the ending credits with the title characater replacing the burnt out bulb of the lamp taking the place of the I in the Pixar logo, and then he replaces the R after knocking it down. Uniquely, this was only added on the DVD release and also recycled from a trailer.
- Also, he replaces the bulb with a Compact Fluorescent. More eco-friendly, see?
- An additional one occurs immediately afterwards. The "Bn L" logo appears complete with the "Bn L" jingle.
Kim Possible had the episodes of Season 4 end with humorous stingers.
Disney's Hercules ends with Hades (who was left trapped in the river Styx at the end of the story) complaining that everybody got a happy ending but him... and then lampshaded the fact that the audience is probably gone by now by wondering out loud if anybody's listening.
King Of The Hill usually ends by recycling a quote from earlier in the episode; generally one that benefits from a lack of context to make it funny.
"Gooooooooooooo bye-bye!" (a few episodes even lampshade this.)

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Yu-Gi-Oh: The Abridged Series includes a joke at the end of every episode. One version was a clip from something, paired with that internet meme about Lex Luthor telling Lois Lane to "say the line"... that little exchange that ends in "WRONG!"
- To clarify — the video is taken from the series, while the audio is a random sound bite from somewhere else — examples are Gorillaz's 'Feel Good Inc.', Dan Green's "I'm going to do my laundry!" comment, the above Lex/Lois exchange, and a self Take That on Little Kuriboh's marriage proposal over YouTube. Sometimes the video isn't from the series — one episode involved the Drama Hog, which was played again at the end with the caption "Rejected Cloverfield Monster".
  - These eyecatchers have actually become a staple of many Abridged Series as a result, though Little Kuriboh is so far the only Abridger to regularly use two instead of one.
Although many abridged series have an after episode stinger, in a rare case in Tenchi Muyo Abridged in the season 1 finale, after the credits roll that credit every single person involved in the series to that point, a shot of space is shown as Kagato's dismembered hand is seen floating seemingly lifelessly through space until it suddenly bursts open and teleports away as Kagato is faintly heard to say "bitch".
The plot threads left hanging by the lonelygirl15 were arguably a sequel hook to begin with. But then, just when you think it's over, one more video is uploaded. We see the now-penultimate video being taped from a different angle, then at literally the last second, reveal the blogger to be none other than The Dragon...
A few You Tube Poop videos show things at the end, such as subliminal messages/images or a "CUT-OFF PREVENTION" blurb (Youtube is known for frequently cutting off half a second of video, maybe more depending on the length). Steg~~blob~~ often shows a clip at the end of his videos showing Big Bird saying, "Coming soon on Sesame Street!" and then cutting to something completely unrelated, while Big Bird finishes off with "Toodle-oo!"

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