Riddles for the Ages in Live-Action TV.
- Agent Carter: Due to the series' cancellation, several plot threads are left unresolved. Such as:
- Who shot Jack and why? Did he survive?
- What are the implications and full potential of Zero Matter?
- If Daniel Sousa is in fact Peggy's future husband; what was in the M. Carter file, and which Carter it referred to?note
- Amazing Stories (2020): In "Signs Of Life" It's never explained exactly what the aliens had been doing on Earth, though we can guess it was probably to do with espionage and infiltration.
- Babylon 5: Why does every sentient species in the universe have a dish that is identical to Swedish meatballs?G'kar: I suspect it's one of those great universal mysteries which will either never be explained... or which would drive you mad if you ever learned the truth.
- Battlestar Galactica (2003):
- Did Baltar's Cylon Detector correctly identify the Final Five as being Cylons or not?
- What did D'Anna mean when she told Baltar that "You were right" in the Temple of Hopes / the Five?
- Just what was Starbuck in Season Four?
- Who or what is behind the virtual beings? All we know is that It doesn't like to be called "God".
- Barney Miller: While it's implied that Sgt. Nick Yemana passed on when his actor did, the exact details are never revealed.
- Beauty and the Beast (1987): Why is Vincent a beast? Who left him outside St. Vincent's hospital and why?
- In The Big Bang Theory episode "The Closet Reconfiguration", an unopened letter to Howard from his father is read (out of typical lack of respect for privacy) by Sheldon. Howard, upset that his father had left when he was a child, burns the letter, but Sheldon is coaxed into revealing its contents to all the other characters except Howard. At the end, Howard is unsure whether he wants to know as well, and the gang devise a quantum-uncertainty-inspired solution to achieve both knowledge and ignorance: Each of them tells him one possibility for what the letter said, only one being correct (except Sheldon, who said it was a treasure map). Howard hopes they were all true. Later events do increase the likelihood for one of them, but we, along with Howard, still don't know for certain.
- What was in the Christmas present from her parents that Temperance finally opens at the end of a Bones Christmas Episode?
- In one episode of Boy Meets World, the characters engage in an Escalating War and it's never explained how they pulled off certain outrageous pranks. Like, how the hell did Cory and Shawn move Rachel's car into her dorm room? And where did Rachel, Jack, and Angela get that bear?
- Breaking Bad: Just who the fuck is Gustavo Fring, and is that even his real name? The most the audience learns about his past is that he migrated from Chile during Pinochet's regime in the 1980s, and that his past was important enough for the Juarez Cartel to spare his life, but aside from that, nothing else is revealed. Even Mike Ehrmantraut, the Almighty Janitor of the criminal underworld and Gus Fring's head enforcer, is unable to find out anything about Gus.
- Brooklyn Nine-Nine:
- What would Rosa do to Mr. Bean's body? All we know is that it involves a very large glass of....something, requires something he never did, and judging by Jake and Debbie's reaction, it is damn disturbing.
- What did Hitchcock wanted to ask Rosa when she came out to the squad? When she rejects the question, he admits that it wasn't tasteful.
- What happened at the bank that made Amy run late for the first time ever?
- What did Hitchcock throw into the burn barrel?
- Was Scully talking about his wife or dog when mentioning "Kelly"? We later find out that both of them are named Kelly, but we still don't know which one he was talking about.
- What did Rosa draw in the elevator?
- What was the word they couldn't say that Hitchcock confused with "snazz"?
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
- What was Buffy's heaven?
- Was "Normal Again" true?
- How did Warren learn how to build Ted-level robots?
- How did Anya cause the Russian Revolution?
- Exactly how close were Ethan and Ripper?
- Did the PTB extract Angel from that Hell Dimension?
- How did Buffy and the gang save the world and from what in "The Zeppo"? The episode focuses on Xander and an unrelated event, so the audience only gets glimpses of what Buffy's doing.
- The goddamned Cheese Man.
- Burn Notice: During the first half of season two, Michael's B-plot jobs for Carla lead him to the realization that she's preparing to have a sniper assassinate somebody who routinely rides a ferry across the Miami harbor. The full details are never revealed due to a Halfway Plot Switch: in the mid-season finale "Good Soldier", a third party murders the sniper and makes an unsuccessful try for Michael as well, throwing Carla's organization into chaos.
- What is Columbo 's first name? For that matter what is Mrs. Columbo's first name? Well, okay, maybe there ARE some answers to this one, although they're contentious. Columbo's first name is Frank, if you can pause your Blu Ray while the character is showing his ID. The creators say, though, that they didn't approve that ID prop, and that Columbo's first name is still officially unrevealed. His wife's first name is "Rose", if you go by Columbo's probably-not-canon Celebrity Roast appearance, or Kate if you go by the definitely-not-canon Mrs. Columbo spinoff.
- Community: Who was the Ass Crack Bandit? The episode focused on finding their identity ended with a montage hinting that various characters might have been them. One of the writers tweeted part of the script from the Grand Finale reading "ANNIE (was probably the ass crack bandit)," but there was never a conclusive answer given.
- Criminal Minds:
- In the aptly titled episode "Doubt," was the shifty college campus security guard really the killer? The heroes are pretty sure he is just going by their instinct for profiling, but before they can get any evidence that would actually hold up in court, he himself is murdered by a disturbed student, who then slashes her own stomach and the case dies with her. The series' original lead character Jason Gideon is so disturbed by the fact that his team may or may not have gotten two innocent people killed by utterly botching their investigation (along with the murder of his girlfriend in an earlier episode) that he resigns from the FBI.
- Similarly, in the episode "P911," was the school principal who attempted to buy a child slave from the Villain of the Week doing so to rescue him, as he insists, or molest him, as the heroes believe?
- Was the initial suspect in "Out of the Light," who the team thought they had cleared, involved after all? If not, where and how did he get those compromising photos of the victim, and what did he intend to do with them?
- In the Diagnosis: Murder episode "Rear Windows '98" the culprit is caught, but he refuses to say why he did it when questioned.
- Doctor Who:
- The Doctor's backstory was clearly intended as this during the show's early years. His backstory is fairly well-codified now (save for some prominent gaps that simply cannot be answered without derailing the show), but the show ran for over a decade before the Doctor was even confirmed as an alien, let alone running arcs about him becoming Lord President of Gallifrey. There are two that will probably remain perpetually unknown, though:
- What's the Doctor's real name, and why doesn't he want anyone to know it? During the Steven Moffat years, this becomes an actual plot point in-universe: The oldest question in existence, which must never be answered, is revealed to be "Doctor who?" It's revealed why the question's so important at this point during the Doctor's life in "The Time of the Doctor", but the crisis gets resolved without answering it, or revealing why his name is a secret in the first place. The question gets asked during a different crisis in "The Name of the Doctor", but while it does get answered then, it's still never revealed. In the Twelfth Doctor's final moments, he even says it's very important nobody knows what it is... but children can hear, sometimes.
- Why did he leave Gallifrey? Various stories for the 25th and 50th anniversaries have presented the circumstances... Although he often claimed it was because he was bored, it was really because he was scared. He was also being actively chased by the Chancellery Guard, and he took an ancient Gallifreyan stellar manipulator with him. The Time Lord President tried to get the Doctor's own brother to assassinate him, but the brother told him to run instead and assassinated the President. And this was also the mysterious incident in which he "stole" the President's daughter... who's also his granddaughter Susan... which raises loads of tantalizing questions and leaves loads of implications, but still doesn't tell us why.
- In "Destiny Of The Daleks", why did Romana regenerate? She was never mortally wounded or anything.
- In "Castrovalva", what was the malevolent presence the Doctor felt at the center of the Tardis? note
- Is Jack destined to become the Face of Boe? If so, what are Boekind, and how did the Face die in "Gridlock", when Jack can't?
- Played for Laughs in Comic Relief parody "The Curse of Fatal Death" — his companion frequently asks "why/how/what [whatever]?" and he always answers "I'll explain later," but the explanations never happen. This is a reference to the many, many times he said "I'll explain later" or something similar on the show. Specifically, why the Daleks chose to not exterminate the Doctor and Emma, why there are chairs on a Dalek ship, and exactly why the Master is called "The Master". He is called "The Master" because he chose to call himself "The Master", for pretty self-explanatory reasons. Also, it's a play on the fact that both "Doctor" and "Master" are academic degrees.
- In "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances", Captain Jack says he left the Time Agency because they stole two years of his memories. This has never been clearly explained, although some EU sources have taken stabs at it, and on Torchwood, memory-manipulator Adam once held the memories hostage. Some fan theories have it that the memories were erased because Jack discovered that he would eventually become immortal.
- Pretty much everything about the monster in "Midnight". What was it? What did it want? Did it know the Doctor? How was it able to survive on a planet flooded with deadly radiation? Was it intentionally malicious, or just strange? How much of the events of the episode was the creature's doing, and how much was the passengers' paranoia? Is it dead? Not even the Doctor knows the answers.
- Throughout "The End of Time", a mysterious woman continuously appears to Wilfred Mott, steering him towards meeting the Doctor. At the very end, she appears alongside the Big Bad, and her presence is enough to convince the Doctor not to attack him, and apparently getting Killed Off for Real. Once everything is over, Wilfred asks the Doctor exactly who she was. He never gives an answer, and immediately changes the subject.
- "Deep Breath": Did the Twelfth Doctor shove the Big Bad off the hot air balloon, or did the Big Bad jump? (Inquiring Missys want to know!) The baddie had to die to stop the threat posed by him and the other cyborgs, but as is discussed in-story, option one requires the Doctor to violate his Technical Pacifist principles against killing in cold blood, and option two requires the cyborg to violate I Cannot Self-Terminate. So one of the two was lying about their "programming" — but which one?
- "Listen": So, did the "perfect hider" ever exist at all? There's a perfectly logical explanation presented for everything in the episode, but some of them are more contrived than simply assuming the hider exists.
- "Flatline": Were the Boneless malicious or Obliviously Evil?
- There's also the twofold question of the original Osgood and her Zygon duplicate. First of all, which Osgood did Missy kill, and which one survived? And second of all, which of the current Osgoods is from the original pair, and which is the Zygon replacement for the deceased Osgood? Only the Osgoods themselves know — and in the name of peace between humans and Zygons, they're not telling.
- In "The Pilot", Bill's Love Interest Heather is turned into the titular entity by a puddle of leaked fluid left behind by a spaceship. Throughout the rest of Bill's tenure as a companion, even after Heather's return in "The Doctor Falls", it is never explained where the fluid came from. Since Heather effectively became a Physical God as a result, this is especially intriguing. The circumstances of Bill's final appearance, "Twice Upon a Time", suggest that this mystery may never be solved.
- "The Ghost Monument": The planet Desolation was knocked out of its usual orbit sometime before the beginning of the episode. Since the Doctor's teleporter, and Angstrom and Epzo's spaceships, all send everyone to Desolation's former position (leaving the Doctor and company briefly exposed to the vacuum of space), it can be concluded that it happened recently. But how? One possibility is that the party responsible for the planet's, well, desolation, the Stenza, could have done it, but it's implied they haven't been back there for centuries. Was it a natural event? Was it Ilin, the person running the race Angstrom and Epzo are participating in? Or was it something else entirely?
- "It Takes You Away": Ribbons, the mysterious alien the Doctor, Graham, and Yaz meet in the antizone. Who and what is he? Where did he come from? And how did he end up in the antizone? He dies before any of those questions can be answered.
- "The Haunting of Villa Diodati": Most of the odd things that happen inside the titular house are eventually explained as caused by the Cyberium, a powerful Cyber AI. However, the mysterious, ghostly woman and girl who appear a few times and bring Graham a plate of food are never explained, with an implication that they might be real ghosts... even though the series has traditionally explained away all previous instances of ghosts as being some sort of alien or technological phenomena.
- The Doctor's backstory was clearly intended as this during the show's early years. His backstory is fairly well-codified now (save for some prominent gaps that simply cannot be answered without derailing the show), but the show ran for over a decade before the Doctor was even confirmed as an alien, let alone running arcs about him becoming Lord President of Gallifrey. There are two that will probably remain perpetually unknown, though:
- Drake & Josh: Why does Drake rinse his mouth with soda after brushing his teeth? He said he had a theory but we never hear it.
- ER:
- Who beat Dr. Greene to a pulp at the end of Season 3? The assault causes Greene to temporarily go off the deep end and start stalking Chris Law, the disgruntled brother of a man who died under Greene's care, but Law is ruled out as the culprit and in fact Greene ultimately apologizes to him.
- Did Dr. Gant fall onto the train tracks, or did he jump?
- Farscape: Who killed Salis in "Durka Returns"? Chiana, Durka or somebody else? There's a widespread Epileptic Trees theory that it was Zhaan.
- Father Ted:
- What did Dougal do at Blackrock that left several nuns' lives "irreparably damaged" and led to Bishop Brennan calling on several favors to stop the Vatican getting involved?
- What is Mrs. Doyle's full name? Her first name was supposed to have been uttered at one point, but it was dropped.
- Firefly: Due to the series' early cancellation, we never got any definite answers about the Blue Sun Corporation, especially what it was up to under the radar of the Core Worlds. Judging by River's reaction to their corporate logo, nothing good.
- The kangaroo from Flash Forward. Even if the series hadn't been cancelled, chances are good that they never would have explained it.
- Friends: What were Rachel's parting words to Joey that made him want to commit suicide?
- Game of Thrones:
- No one knows the circumstances of Lyanna's abduction by Rhaegar Targaryen, we only know how it ended: her Death by Childbirth giving birth to Jon Snow and Ned promising he would protect the boy.
- Who hired the assassin that tries to kill Bran in the first season? It's never been revealed in the books either, though some characters deduce that it was Joffrey. Cersei is also floated as a suspect, though the sloppiness of the operation makes her unlikely. The show makes things more ambiguous by implying it was Littlefinger.
- Tyrion has spent several years wondering why Orson was obsessed with smashing beetles in the garden. Fans of the show seem to believe Orson represents either the author George R. R. Martin himself (he senselessly kills his characters while the fans wonder why), or the random cruelty of the Gods, or the meaningless nature of the universe.
- What happened when Tyrion brought a donkey and a honeycomb to a brothel?
- Why was the Night King trying to get to Bran and what was his true motive?
- What was the meaning of the strange ritualistic symbols the White Walkers made from the corpses of their victims?
- Garth Marenghis Darkplace: How did a man get pregnant?
- Get Smart: What is Agent 99's real name? In the episodes featuring 99's mother for instance, said mother uses euphemisms such as "darling" or "dear", further hiding the answer.
- Glee: How did Finn Hudson die?
- The Good Place: How exactly can something be 105% perfect?
- Homicide: Life on the Street.
- Subverted in "The Night of the Dead Living". Felton and Lewis try to figure out who keeps lighting a candle in the squadroom. After repeatedly failing, they both decide it's better left as a mystery. However, the final scene reveals Munch was lighting the candle in memory of the dead.
- Played straight and much more darkly with the Adena Watson case. Bayliss and Pembleton are unable to capture Adena Watson's killer. While the lead suspect does confess he had a pedophilic crush on her, it's left ambiguous as to whether he killed her or not, and it's quite possible he was actually innocent. Bayliss's inability to solve the case haunts him throughout the series.
- Horatio Hornblower: What happened in "Mutiny" when Captain Sawyer fell down the hatchway? Was it an accident? Or was he pushed? If he was pushed, who pushed him?
- House:
- When Kutner killed himself, there was no buildup leading to his suicide, and in the aftermath no one was able to find any reason why he might have done it. Since House's main source of fun in life is finding answers to mysteries, he finds this extremely frustrating.
- No explanation was ever given, nor intended, for why House was shot in the second season finale. Nor for what became of "Harpo" in the same episode.
- How I Met Your Mother:
- In "The Pineapple Incident", Ted wakes up with a pineapple on his nightstand with no memory of how it got there, and he still doesn't know 25 years later. Ironically, this isn't actually an example of the trope; a Deleted Scene from "Daisy" made eight years later reveals that Ted stole it from the Captain as he leaves one out as a form of a greeting to the residence. Turns out the writers did actually want to resolve that plot point, and eventually did so in the 9th Episode of the sequel series; How I Met Your Father, where The Captain cameo's and makes a off-hand comment to it as things that angered him.
- "Zoo or False": Was Marshall mugged by a person or by a monkey?
- It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: In "Mac And Dennis Buy A Timeshare," How DID Frank get inside the coil at the playground? Then how did he get back out?
- What is The Waitress's real name? Or the Lawyer's?
- In the series finale of JAG Harm and Mac are given separate postings. They want to stay together so the only solution is for one of them to resign from the Navy. But which one? They toss a coin to decide, and as the coin reaches the top of its arc, we freeze-frame and the credits roll.
- The Leftovers:
- Why did the Departures happen? Where did the people go? The series finale has Nora claim that she visited an alternate dimension of the Earth where only the Departed people are still there. Whether this is true or just a story she tells herself is left ambiguous.
- On a more local level, it's never confirmed what Kevin's wish was that Wayne granted, or tried to grant. As a result, it's never confirmed if it came true or not.
- The main characters in Leverage all eventually find out, but we the audience are never told what Sophie's real name is.
- Liv and Maddie:
- By the series' end, we still have yet to learn whatever Sasha (Ruby's character) did on Sing it Louder!! that got her sent to Monahan Academy, which she's too scared to confess. According to Sasha herself, it's really bad.
- What exactly is Parker's middle name?
- Many plot points of Lost are considered this, but for a specific example, the identity of the shooters in the second outrigger ("The Little Prince", Season 5) became sort of a running joke among the producers: due to Time Travel being involved, too many possible candidates for the role exist and not once has an attempt been made to narrow the circle down.
- Malcolm in the Middle:
- What is the family's last name?
- In "Water Park", what did Hal do that he needed one of the kids to take the fall for him and downright horrified Lois?
- In "Reese's Apartment", what did Reese do that was so unspeakable, he was kicked out of the house? All we know is that cats were involved, and some victims had to evacuate their houses.
- Martin: What does Tommy do for a living? Lampshaded in a episode where Tommy is dating one of his co-workers, who gives the same vague non-answer answers Tommy does as to what their actual jobs are.
- The Mentalist:
- The episode "The Red Barn" has three men who've been dead since 1988 found with one of Red John's trademark smiley-faces painted on the wall, going back to long before his previous earliest known victim. The investigation gradually reveals that the victims were the tyrannical overseers of the farm, and that the smiley face was painted by "some kid who worked on the farm". The end of the episode has the killer of one of the three, Lester Bradovich, claim that it was a Crime of Self-Defense, and that the other two were already lying shot in the basement, and that someone else (presumably Red John) was lurking around nearby. Presumably, Red John killed the first two, possibly For the Evulz, possibly in a case of The Dog Bites Back, but whether Bradovich was an accomplice or Red John had been preparing to kill him to, only to be beaten to the punch, is never revealed.
- The link between the cult Visualize and Red John. It's hinted early on that there is one and the aforementioned "The Red Barn" pretty well confirms it, but it's never made clear what that connection is. Initially it seems to suggest that one of the two suspects involved with Visualize is the real Red John, but they both get ruled out half a season later.
- One of Red John's first victims in the series writes "He is Mar-" on the wall in his blood before dying. It's never revealed what he was trying to write, or even if he was the one who wrote it, or if Red John did to taunt Jane or send him on a wild goose chase, although following the final reveal it's possible that he was trying to write, "He is MacAllister", a misspelling of Red John's last name, and died when the c looked like an r or "He is marshal", a misidentification of Red John's job: a sheriff.
- Shortly after Jane narrows down his list of Red John suspects to seven men (narrowed down from thousands, out of a lot of potential factors), he gets a DVD from Red John that's six months old. In it, Red John correctly predicts who all seven of his suspects are, having known this since before Jane even started investigating them. It's never revealed how he did this, and when Red John actually offers to tell Jane the answer later on (as a form of begging once Jane has the upper hand and is prepared to kill him), Jane refuses to be distracted.
- Moonlighting: What was the Anselmo case actually about?
- Mr. Robot: What is that blue glow on the ground that Tyrell stares at just before he dies from a bullet wound?
- Mystery Science Theater 3000:
- In the Series Fauxnale "Laserblast", what was the movie that appeared at the end that was labeled "The Worst Movie Ever Made"? Merely looking at the VHS tape of it transforms Dr. Forrester into a Star-Baby.
- Parodied in the episode "Prince of Space": Japanese reporters are awaiting the scheduled arrival of a space invasion:Reporter #1: One minute to 8:00.
Reporter #2: Is your watch right?
[A noise is heard and everyone suddenly goes to investigate]
Mike: [somberly] Is his watch right? We may never know. - Subverted with how the humans aboard the Satellite of Love eat and breathe. Despite the opening song first calling attention to the mystery and then urging the viewer to ignore it because it's just a show and you should really just relax, both are eventually answered: the Season 5 episode "Mitchell" reveals that the Satellite has a food supply in storage, which we learn because the Mads hid the Satellite's only escape pod in there inside the crate of Hamdingers, correctly predicting Joel would never think to look there because nobody likes Hamdingers; and the Season 8 episode "Invasion of the Neptune Men" shows that the Satellite has an air supply controlled by the Mads, which is how they keep Joel and Mike from simply walking out of the theater - they cut off the air to all the other rooms while the movie is playing.
- NCIS: How does Gibbs get those boats out of his basement?
- Spoofed in NewsRadio when there's an election for news director. Everyone tells Dave they're going to vote for him, but he ends up not getting a single vote. Afterward, Bill assures Dave that he supports him completely. When Dave asks why Bill didn't vote for him, he replies "I still think I did. I guess it's one of those mysteries we'll never know the answer to."
- Odd Squad: Just how old is Ms. O?
- In One Foot in the Grave:
- In the episode "The Futility of the Fly", the Framing Story is that a playwright briefly employed by the Meldrews as a housekeeper has made a play about the bizarre things that occur to Victor in a typical day. One of these is being sent a giant plastic fly, and at the end, her backer objects that this never gets explained. She protests that it never did get explained, it was just this weird thing that happened and they never found out why, but he's not convinced.
- Did Margaret murder Victor's killer?
- Like the aforementioned book it's based on, the miniseries The Plot Against America also leaves what happened to President Lindbergh up in the air but leans more on the idea that his own government killed him to stop him from entering the war to aid the Nazis. Aunt Evelyn also suggests that he was blackmailed into his Nazi-sympathizing ways but an answer is never given.
- Right at the end of the Quantum Leap episode "Running for Honor", despite everything getting resolved and Sam getting ready to run in the track meetnote , Al admits he's hung up on one lingering question:
- Radio Enfer: Jocelyne went on a trip to Las Vegas, but completely forgot what happened during that trip. Fortunately, some pictures were taken during said trip, with one of them revealing that she won $25,000. However, Jocelyne realizes she has no idea what happened to all that money, and the episode ends immediately after.
- Scrubs: In the episode "Their Story", JD tells Todd that Turk's mind cannot be changed when it's set on something. He then goes into one of his usual fantasy sequences trying to imagine how he would try, but since the episode is told from the viewpoint of other characters instead of JD, we never see that fantasy, only Todd reacting with annoyance waiting for JD to finish.JD: We would have to find a whole lotta gnomes!
Todd: That's helpful. - The Secret World of Alex Mack: Did Alex take the antidote to GC-161 and lose her powers in the series finale?
- Seinfeld:
- Seinfeld is the Trope Namer with the episode "The Pie". The very first scene of the episode has Jerry offering his Girl of the Week a slice of apple pie, which she refuses to taste. She doesn't give a reason, just shakes her head, and Jerry becomes obsessed with figuring out why she won't try the pie. He rules out a lot of possibilities, but by the episode's end, he's still as clueless as ever.
George: Did you ever solve the riddle of the pie?
Jerry: No, that's one for the ages.- In "The Seven", Jerry dates a woman who always appears to be wearing the same dress. He wonders if she never changes her clothes, if she has a closet full of dresses like that, or if it's something else entirely. He never finds out and neither does the audience.
- Six Feet Under:
- It is left somewhat unclear whether Lisa's death was an accident or a murder, as well the paternity of her and Nate's daughter Maya.
- What was Nate Sr. doing in the apartment he kept hidden from his family?
- What was the dog that briefly appeared in one of the last episodes, and why was Nate so afraid of it?
- Sliders: "Post Traumatic Slide Syndrome" ends with Arturo knocking out his double and entering the vortex. Or was it the original Arturo who was knocked out, and his double made the slide?
- In The Sopranos, what happened to Tony in "Made in America" after there was a Smash to Black? According to Matt Servitto, the scene was at least meant to be less ambiguous with his character coming out of the bathroom and walking towards Tony. Still doesn't explain if he was going to kill him or if he just wanted to talk to him. David Chase has gone out of his way to provide a definitive answer to the question (aside from saying that his original ending for the show did have Tony getting wacked), saying he wants the viewers to decide what happened to Tony.
- Stargate SG-1:
- Who were the aliens whose ship attacked the Prometheus in "Grace"?
- Who and what the Furlings were is never stated.
- Star Trek: What exactly is a stem bolt, besides being "top quality merchandise"?
- Star Trek: The Next Generation:
- In "The Next Phase", when Geordi and Ro were presumed dead, Riker planned to say something about Ro. Since they returned at their memorial service, we never hear it. What did he intend to say?
- Whatever happened to the signal sent to a remote area of the galaxy by the parasitic aliens at the end of "Conspiracy"? We'll likely never knownote .
- At the end of "Hollow Pursuits", Reg Barclay deletes all his holodeck programs except for "Program 9". What was in that program, and why was it worth saving? Going by a conversation between Worf and O'Brien on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, it's possibly the "Three Musketeers" program.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
- What was the real reason for Garak's exile
? He gives several contradictory stories, but insists that they're all true... "especially the lies." - In "Move Along Home", what are klon pegs, and what "uses" are they good for?
- How did Weyouns 1, 2 and 3 die?
- In "Improbable Cause", who was the informant Odo spoke with?
- In the episode "In The Pale Moonlight", who is the optolythic data rod seller? How did he get his hands on a genuine Cardassian data rod, and what did he want the bio-mimetic gel for? One popular theory is that there is no seller. Garak always had it and he needed the gel to make an explosive to destroy Senator Vreenak's shuttle. This is somewhat supported by a line of dialogue from Bashir that bio-mimetic gel can be used to make organic explosives, but nothing has been confirmed as of yet.
- What was the real reason for Garak's exile
- Star Trek: Voyager:
- Extreme Risk: Why did the Voyager crew wanted that probe so badly?
- Alice: Why did Alice wanted to go to the particle fountain she called "home", and what was on the other side?
- Fury: How was Tuvok able to sense that something was wrong with the timeline?
- Star Trek: The Next Generation:
- In the finale of The Terror, Captain Crozier finds the last surviving members of the Franklin Expedition with their camp in shambles and evidence of cannibalism. For some reason, Lieutenant Little had gold chains sewn into his face and he utters the word "Close?" before dying. The meaning of the chains and his question are never revealed. Even creepier is that this is based on testimony from real life Inuit who supposedly found some of the Franklin Expedition dead in similar condition.
- That '70s Show: Where exactly is Fez from? In the second-to-last episode, it turns out that Fez and his friend themselves don't know the name of their homeland, as the British are too stuck up to tell them and the Dutch they can't understand.
- That Mitchell and Webb Look:
- What does the word "Numberwang" mean, and what are the rules for determining whether something is Numberwang? Bertrand Russell apparently realized the answer while staring at a jug on his desk, but he destroyed the jug so nobody could copy his work. There's a living computer named Colosson which knows the answer, but its extreme views on what to do to non-Numberwang objects make it a bad idea to ask it. Everyone else can only find out by carefully checking all 37 volumes of the rules, which are written in a code which is never explained.
- What was The Event in the "Remain Indoors" skit? Why do the characters all keep getting traumatic memories of it?
- Top Gear: The real identity of The Stig. Or the age of The Stig. Or the origin of The Stig. Or anything about Stig beyond "tame racing driver". There was some suggestion that The Stig is in fact Michael Schumacher, but after he got lost on the test track it seemed disproved. And when The Stig actually revealed his identity in an interview (not on the show), he was promptly fired for breach of contract and a new Stig was found (in Jerusalem, by the three wise[cracking] men, aka the hosts. It was... weird).
- Averted in Twin Peaks. The creators intended to never have an answer to "Who killed Laura Palmer?'', but Executive Meddling forced them to come up with an answer halfway through the second season, at which point most fans agree it heavily declined in quality. On the one hand, with the mystery solved, the pretense of keeping the FBI Agent main character around is heavily contrived and becomes obvious that the show is just making things up as they go along. On the other hand, the executives have a point: How long could fans tolerate no progression on the main drive of the story (just endless red herrings), and how long could an FBI Agent expect to continue staying in the area with no progress on the case?
- The Walking Dead:
- Much like the comic, the series has never definitively answered what caused the virus that reanimates the dead.note There have been hints dropped here and there ("TS-19" suggests that the virus attacks the brain, then restarts the brain stem after the victim dies; the first season of Fear the Walking Dead suggests that there was a flu-like virus that may or may not be related), but never anything concrete.
- Who killed the Vatos gang at their hideout? Deleted scenes from the second-season premiere, "What Lies Ahead" (originally intended to be part of the original season premiere, "Miles Behind Us") posit that the Vatos were attacked and killed by a large group of attackers, whose identity the main group of characters muse on before moving on. As the action moved away from Georgia in the fifth season, no clear answer has ever been (or likely ever will be) given.
- The Walking Dead: World Beyond ends with a very compelling question: What is the purpose of the graffiti on the wall of Biomédicine DDMI, and the man's line, "We won't jail them like the others"? Did the French intentionally release the virus, or was there an accident that they tried to cover-up, which only made things worse? The dialogue between both characters is ambiguous, with no clear answers.
