Tropes Media Browse Indexes Forums Videos Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Tools
Cut List New Edits Edit Reasons Launches Images List Crowner Activity Un-typed Pages Recent Page Type Changes Changelog
Tips
Creating New Redirects Cross Wicking Tips for Editing Text Formatting Rules Glossary Edit Reasons Handling Spoilers Word Cruft Administrivia FAQ
Tropes HQ
About Us Contact Us Advertise DMCA Notice Privacy Policy Report Bug
Go Ad-Free Changelog
  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Highlight Links
 

Follow TV Tropes

Following

No Ending / Western Animation

Go To

No Endings in Western Animation.

SpongeBob SquarePants has its own page.

  • Adventure Time:
    • In "The Duke", Finn and Jake are attacked by the Marquis of Nuts and an angry squirrel as the episode suddenly ends.
    • "The Chamber of Frozen Blades" ends with Finn and Jake punching the Ice King for kidnapping Dr. Princess.
    • At the end of "Evicted!", Finn and Jake discover their tree house is being flooded with worms, and they get hypnotized by its king. Do they snap out of it and fight him? Cue the end credits. Three seasons later, "King Worm" shows them confronting him, but in a way that makes no sense as a followup.
    • "Box Prince" just ends with the matter of which cat was the real prince left unresolved, the legitimacy of the Box Kingdom being questioned, and Finn getting licked by a bunch of cats.
  • The Amazing World of Gumball, like Seinfeld, ends many episodes abruptly right after the climax without any real denouement.
  • American Dad!:
    • "Max Jets" ends just as Roger was about to explain everything that happened.
    • "Pulling Double Booty" ends with Hayley about to go into another psychotic rage as Stan desperately tries to explain why he's impersonated her boyfriend Bill (he's Stan's body double and he dumped Hayley to try to get with Francine). It was originally going to end with Hayley burning down a forest, but was changed due to a recent forest fire in California.
    • In "Criss-Cross Applesauce: The Ballad Of Billy Jesusworth" Steve's subplot, a Random Events Plot sung to the tune of R Kelly's "Trapped in the Closet" is cut short when Francine interrupts his telling of the story.
    • "Shakedown Steve" ends Stan's subplot with the family (except for Steve, who was following Phish on tour with Jeff) passing out in a escape room-turned-server room after the insane escape room attendant locked them in, and then... the episode abruptly goes back to (and ends on) the main plot, leaving the subplot unresolved and the fates of Stan, Francine, Hailey, Roger and Klaus unexplained.
  • The Angry Beavers: The episode where Norbert (who is deliriously ill with an ear infection) and Daggett are invited to Stump's family reunion ends with Norbert's head swelling to tremendous proportions (read: bigger than a mountain) and Daggett and the remaining Stump family members heading for the hills. The final scene is Norbert peeking over the side of the mountain, laughing insanely as he presumably is about to give chase and then...fade to black.
  • The Animaniacs episode "Ups and Downs" ends with Wakko and Dr. Scratchansniff still stuck in the elevator, right after an elevator maintenance man named Goyt Furman manages to also get himself trapped in the elevator with them.
  • Many episodes of Aqua Teen Hunger Force end arbitrarily with little to no conclusion, the first being "Bus of the Undead".
  • Arthur:
    • The results of the Ratburn Rally in "D.W. Blows the Whistle" are never shown.
    • S10's "Flaw and Order," which cuts to black just as another stone is about to hit a replaced cake plate.
    • "S.W.E.A.T." just ends with the kids getting over the stress of the test and we never learn how they did.
    • "Best of the Nest" ends with the kids and Mr. Ratburn doing the Hokey Pokey to scare off something in the woods, with no conclusion.
    • "The Cave" ends shortly after Arthur's class gets out of the cave. We're never shown how D.W. reacts to hearing that Arthur wasn't scared at all or if Arthur tells David that he used his tip to get out of the cave.
    • "The Director's Cut" ends without the audience seeing how George's amateur film project turns out.
  • The Beavis and Butt-Head episode "Cow Tipping" was about Beavis and Butt-head going cow tipping and it results with Butt-head pushing over a cow that crushes Beavis. Just then the crazy farmer appears and calls the cow as good as dead and gets his chainsaw. Beavis tells the farmer to kill the cow and not him...it fades to black and all we hear is Beavis scream, the chainsaw running and the farmer laughing. By the next episode, Beavis is fine with no explanation.
  • The Chowder episode "Paint the Town" ends with Chowder leaving Mung Daal, Truffles and Shnitzel stuck in an alternate dimension with no way home...then it suddenly goes to black on their cries for help...which Chowder doesn't hear.
  • Danger Mouse had several episodes with anticlimactic (non)endings, including "The Tower of Terror".
  • Dexter's Laboratory: In "Ewww...That's Growth", Dexter invents a machine to make himself taller so he can ride the popular new roller coaster "The Thing". It works, except now he's so tall that he smashes his head on the tunnel. The End.
  • The final episode of Duckman concludes with the somewhat messy but successful triple wedding of Eric Duckman and Honey Chicken, King Chicken and Bernice, and Cornfed and Beverly. Then Beatrice, who had been presumed dead for the entire series, and even gave a postmortem final farewell in an early episode, not only shows up alive and well, she's genuinely surprised that anyone thought she ever died. Cornfed, who (apparently) knows the truth, says "I can explain"...and then "TO BE CONTINUED...?" appears on the bottom of the screen. It wasn't.
  • Fanboy and Chum Chum offends this trope, combined with Status Quo Is God, Reset Button, Snap Back and Negative Continuity. Many episodes end with the characters turning into things, suffering a fatal accident or revealing a dark secret about someone, but by the next episode with no explanation, everything is completely back to normal.
  • Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: "One False Movie" features Mac and Bloo creating an insanely expensive movie for a film festival, and fail spectacularly. Mac laments that even if all but the beginning of the movie hadn't been taped over by Eduardo, the movie still had no ending. Bloo counters that it didn't need an ending, because Smash Cut "The End" Card.
  • The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy:
    • In "Billy Gets an 'A'", Grim creates a Bizarro Universe when he magically changes Billy's test score to an A and has to travel through time with Mandy to prevent it from happening. Eventually, he and Mandy reach prehistoric times, leading Grim to ask "How will this ever end?" Smash Cut to a "The End" card.
    • Even though not an episode, In "The Schlubs", Grim watches Billy's My Troubled Pony DVD set and Mandy says it has no ending because it was never made. And the pony falls of a volcano which ends the series and Grim was devastated from this.
  • Invader Zim:
    • "Walk Of Doom" ends with Zim and GIR winding up in Mexico, thus getting them even further from home.
    • In the episode "Bolognius Maximus", this episode is one of the infamous examples, Zim infects Dib with bologna DNA, but ends up getting infected. They tried to make a cure but fail and both of them get chased by a pack of dogs and barricade in an abandoned house fully turned into bologna sausages. Then the two sit on a couch, where Dib calls Zim a jerk as the episode ends.
  • Littlest Pet Shop (2012): In the episode "So Interesting" although she does eventually finish her story, Pepper cuts it off early on and has no intention on continuing. She just believes that's all there is worth telling.
  • Some of the Looney Tunes shorts would just end abruptly with no real ending.
  • Martha Speaks:
    • In the episode "Martha The Hero Maker", T.D. runs out of paper, his comic ends before we find out if Helen and Truman got saved.
    • In "Paws And Effect", T.D. just ends his comic on three people running from GLOG, who wants to eat them, a question mark, and "How will it all end?".
    • In "Dogs In Space", the comic series Danny and T.D. read ends on an unresolved cliffhanger, due to the company going out of business.
    • In "Dogs From Space", the Chuck Nebula comic that ends on an unresolved cliffhanger is mentioned again.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • In "Stranger Than Fan Fiction", at the end, Rainbow returns the sentiment, complimenting Quibble for his perception and puzzle-solving skills. As they leave the jungle as friends, Quibble goes on an extended ramble about his Daring Do fan fiction that continues over the end credits.
    • The episode "The Cart Before the Ponies", ends with Applejack, Rarity, and Rainbow Dash watching the foals performing the second race without the adults. No outcome is shown.
    • In "Fame and Misfortune", while the Mane Six do learn a lesson, the episode doesn't have a resolution. It just stops, with the Mane Six having been shut inside the castle, and the massive pony crowd outside still arguing.
    • In "Between Dark and Dawn", while the sisters manage to resolve their differences, they have to help Twilight fix the device that is making the sun and moon rise and set. They rush over to help her but the episode ends before the sisters could fix the device or even make it back to the Canterlot Castle. Fortunately, in the next episode, everything's fine.
    • In "A Trivial Pursuit", it is never revealed who won the game nor does the episode end with the game itself ending.
  • Nature Cat: "No Bird Left Behind" ends with the gang stuck in Honduras with their plane broken down after Brooks the Oriole reunites with his flock there and Daisy calls Houston who asks her what he can do for her. That's that. The End.
  • Ned's Newt:
  • The Nutshack does this all the time, with episodes abruptly ending at random points. A good example is the episode "Duck Karma," which is about a cursed duck egg. At the end of the episode, Phil eats the egg, which makes him think that he’s turned into a duck. It cuts to the next morning, where he’s sitting naked on a rooftop, still thinking that he’s a duck. The episode just ends from there.
  • Phineas and Ferb:
    • In "Atlantis", on Candace's end, as she and Mom leave to get the blue ribbon and fail to notice Atlantis.
    • In "Agent Doof", the brothers are turned into babies by an invention of Dr. Doofenshmirtz's, and Doof happened to defect to the good side at the time. While the plot with OWCA ended, the subplot with Candace trying to show their mom that the boys turned into babies stops at where everybody in the room except for Candace being turned into babies (who then hopes that the change doesn't stick and things go back to normal by the next episode).
  • The Pirates of Dark Water was canceled with its Myth Arc nowhere near completed, as the titular Pirates had only secured eight of the Thirteen Treasures of Rule. To really hammer the point home, while Cartoon Network was showing reruns of the show, they ran a bumper that flat out said the show was never finished and not to hold your breath for an ending.
  • The Proud Family once did a Very Special Episode with Penny making friends with a Muslim girl and realizing that several post-September 11th stereotypes about Islam are wrong. After a post-Ramadan dinner that she attended with the family, they come to their house to find it T'Ped and the phrase "GO BACK TO YOUR COUNTRY" written in spray paint across the roof and front of the house. The episode continues with An Aesop where Penny learns about intolerance and gives a speech, but we never learn who did it or how the family reacts.
  • Ready Jet Go!: "The Plant From Bortron 7" ends with Mindy announcing that she has planted more seeds. Then, more giant plants emerge, and the kids scream in terror. That's it. That's the ending.
  • ReBoot infamously ends on a cliffhanger, with Megabyte within the Principal Office and claiming he will begin hunting the protagonists down. There was a conclusion planned in another movie, but over 2 decades later no movie has been made, and no resolution has been televised.
  • The Ren & Stimpy Show:
    • The episode "Big Flakes" has the eponymous characters still trapped in the cabin and now reduced to eating nails and wood. It then cuts to outside the cabin, and all the snow has melted except the snow that's still covering the cabin. Everyone outside is oblivious to the snowed-in cabin. The End.
    • "The Cat That Laid the Golden Hairball": Stimpy appears to be dying, because "When a cat loses its hairball gland, it's over." Ren suddenly repeats "It's over!" cheerfully. Stimpy hops up to echo him just as happily, and the characters dance briefly before the credits roll.
  • Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat:
    • The episode "Up, Up, and Away" ends with Fu-Fu carrying Dongwa over a sunset, with no explanation of what happened afterwards. Though we assume they made it out okay.
    • "Fur Cut" has both actual and in-universe examples: In-universe is about the story of how Sagwa got the patches on her fur and abruptly ends with her and the dragon planning to stop the forest fire. She ended after she told the truth. The actual episode ends with just Sagwa retelling what exactly happened earlier.
    • "Ba-Do and the Lantern Festival" ends with Ba-Do and Sagwa separated from their family but enjoying the last of the lantern festival... and then the episode just abruptly stops without any explanation as to how Ba-Do got back home. As a result, we're left to assume the Magistrate and Tai-Tai realized one of their daughters and pets were both missing and were able to find them.
  • The Simpsons lampshades this trope often.
    • The Season 12 episode "The Great Money Caper" intentionally leaves the entire story unresolved. Just as Lisa is about to reveal an important plot point (after pointing out that, without this bit of info, the events of the episode would seem "absurd, perhaps even insulting to your intelligence,") Otto bursts into the room and yells "Hey, everybody! SURF'S UP!" The scene then cuts to everyone surfing, and the episode ends there. note  The DVD Commentary reveals that they wanted to make the ending as unexplained as possible, as a nod to all "caper" themed movies.
    • In Season 11's "Missionary: Impossible", Homer becomes a missionary, goes to a tropical island, builds a church and then rings the bell so loud a volcano(!) erupts. Just as Homer and a native girl he calls "Lisa Jr." are falling into the lava (presumably to their doom) a PBS-style fundraising pitch cuts in and the episode ends. This tied in to the start of the episode, where a Britcom he's watching on PBS gets cut short by the announcement of a pledge drive. This episode also qualifies as a "Shaggy Dog" Story.note 
    • "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes" ends with the Simpsons still trapped on The Island. Come next episode and they're back in Springfield like nothing happened.
    • Crossed with Gainax Ending for "Das Bus", with the audience only knowing the children were saved thanks to a narrator who says they were saved by "well, let's say... Moe". In that case, it's a parody of Lord of the Flies ending.
    • "We're on the Road to D'ohwhere" plays this even further. At the start of this episode, Homer ends up having to drive Bart (who's on a no-fly list) to a correctional facility after a prank, all the while annoyed that he's missing a Las Vegas trip with his bar buddies, and Marge and Lisa have a garage sale. In the very last scene, Lisa checks the answering machine and learns that Marge has been arrested for drug trafficking, Homer is in prison after brawling with a pit boss, and Bart's gone missing. Lisa says she always knew it'd come down to her and Maggie and that she'll look for work in the morning. The episode ends there.
    • In "The Twisted World of Marge Simpson", Marge starts a pretzel company, and to one-up her rivals, Homer hires the Mafia to take them down a notch. However her rivals do some tit-for-tat of their own by hiring the Yakuza, which leads to a massive gang battle on the Simpsons' front lawn. The episode ends abruptly in the middle of the fight with no resolution. According to the audio commentary, the writers were stumped for an ending.
    • "A Totally Fun Thing That Bart Will Never Do Again": The family is stranded on Antarctica. We then see Bart as an old man but how/when they were rescued is never explained.
    • "E Pluribus Wiggum" never reveals how Ralph's presidential campaign turned out. We see a fake ad asking the people of Springfield to vote for him and then... credits.
    • In "Milhouse of Sand and Fog", Bart builds a dummy of himself for Milhouse to throw off a cliff, to get his parents' attention. Milhouse breaks his glasses and accidentally rams the real Bart off the cliff, although Homer and Marge are able to save him. Milhouse still believes that he has killed Bart and jumps off, into the rapids that end with a steep waterfall drop. Marge asks if Milhouse can swim, to which Bart sarcastically responds, "What do you think?" Then the episode ends abruptly with no resolution.
    • In "Fear of Flying", after Marge has conquered her fear of flying, she and Homer board a plane. The plane then crashes into the ocean, Homer tells Marge that a carp is swimming around her feet, and then the episode cuts to the credits without any explanation of whether or not they were rescued.
    • "Bart of Darkness" zigzags this trope. The whereabouts of Maude Flanders was resolved. However, Bart's leg remains broken, the Simpsons still have their pool, and although Martin manages to steal Lisa's popularity, he quickly loses it when his pool is destroyed, with no explanation as to whether or not this means Lisa is popular again.
    • "The Trouble With Trillions" ends with Homer, Mr. Burns, and Smithers stuck on a makeshift raft sailing from Cuba to the USA while being wanted criminals by the latter for stealing a trillion-dollar bill (and that's before they accidentally gave it to Fidel Castro.) The closest thing to a resolution to this is an off-hand remark by Mr. Burns that he'll bribe the jury.
  • The Smurfs (2021) episode "The Majestic 5" ends with Dimwitty, who has recently saved every Smurf from Gargamel, driving off a cliff, causing the Smurfs to start screaming, but the episode ends abruptly from there.
  • "Retakes Not Included", possibly the most meta episode of Taz-Mania, has no ending because Buddy Boar literally forgot to include the final scene.
  • Teen Titans (2003):
    • "Revved Up" focuses on the Titans' efforts to retrieve a mysterious briefcase critical to their fight against the Brotherhood of Evil. Cut to black the moment Robin opens the case, the contents of which are never revealed afterwards.
    • The series finale "Things Change" is about Beast Boy finding a girl who mysteriously looks exactly like Terra, who was last seen turned to stone and presumed dead. But before he can fully confirm that she is Terra (with the strong implication that she is, but doesn't want anything to do with the Teen Titans), she rejects him and he goes off to fight a monster the other Titans have been struggling with. End credits. Neither the girl's identity or the fight with the monster are properly concluded, nor are they followed up on in the Made-for-TV Movie "Trouble in Tokyo."
  • Teen Titans Go!:
  • The [adult swim] pilot That Crook'd 'Sipp just ends with Gray finding out her real father is the Swamp Monster and her being too late to stop the wedding between her mom and her fake dad and then a random shootout happens, not showing who survived.
  • VeggieTales:
    • The song "The Song of the Cebu" ends this way, to much annoyance on the part of Archibald and the audience in general. Jimmy stated that he wanted his money back.
      Audience: No more song about cebu
      Need another verse or two
      Audience is standing, and leaving,
      Bye-bye moo moo, Bye-bye moo moo, Bye-bye moo moo, moo moo.
    • The show's retelling of the story of Jonah ends extremely abruptly, with Jonah in the middle of a hissy fit after God has rebuked him for wishing death on the repentant city of Nineveh. This follows the original Biblical account, where the story ended equally abruptly.

Previous

Index

Next

  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Wide Load

Important Links

Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Go Ad Free!
Crucial Browsing
Resources
Top