Uncertain Doom / Literature

• All Tomorrows: A race of technologically advanced aliens called the Qu wage war against humanity and decide to genetically modify the humans they capture and/or bring under their rule, turning most of them into mindless, animalistic creatures before departing. Ages later, when the races of sapient Posthumaninity reform into a new intergalactic government, they at some point reencounter the Qu. The text states that the Qu were "subdued", but what this actually means isn't elaborated upon. It's entirely possible that what Posthumanity did to the Qu in vengeance was so horrifically unspeakable that the author is trying to subtly skip over it.
• American Psycho: The apparent death of yuppie Paul Owen is an example of this trope resulting from an Unreliable Narrator. While his coworker Patrick Bateman seems to murder him with an axe, when Bateman confesses his crime to his lawyer, the latter insists it's impossible because he had lunch with Owen after the murder supposedly took place. Since Bateman is insane and prone to bizarre delusions and hallucinations, it's possible he only thinks the murder happened; on the other hand, members of Bateman's social circle being easily confused with each other is a Running Gag, so it's also possible Bateman's lawyer mistook one of his client's other colleagues for Owen, an interpretation given extra credibility by the fact that he believes he's talking to somebody other than Bateman in the conversation that establishes this.^note This fact also suggests a third possibility: that Bateman confused one of his other coworkers for Owen, which would mean the real Owen is still alive but somebody else died in his place. By extension, this also casts doubt on the other murders Bateman supposedly committed, especially since nobody else ever seems to notice that they happened despite some of them not exactly being discreet.
• Animal Farm: Snowball is last seen being chased off the farm by Napoleon's dogs. Whether he managed to escape or was killed by them is never made clear; while Napoleon insists he's still alive, he never gives any evidence to support the idea that Snowball survived and his claims could just be so he can use him as a boogeyman and a scapegoat. The animated movie adaptation makes it all but explicit that he dies, however.
• Animorphs:
  • Esplin 9466 Lesser, a fugitive yeerk inhabiting the body of tech billionaire Joe Bob Fenestre, has figured out how to survive without Kandrona rays by cannibalizing other yeerks. A disgusted Jake reluctantly agrees to let him live on the condition that he never leaves Fenestre's mansion. Then the mansion burns down a few days later under suspicious circumstances; while the fire is said to have not caused any fatalities, it's not clear if Esplin will live much longer, and his ultimate fate is never mentioned.
  • The final fate of David is left ambiguous. He asks Rachel to kill him, because a few more years of being trapped as a rat is too much for him. Rachel contemplates her role as the Animorph who does the team's dirty work, and wonders what the right thing to do is. David is never seen again after this.
  • The ending of the series ends with the remaining Animorphs doing a suicide charge in a spaceship into another spaceship, cutting off before it mentions the result of the action, leaving their ultimate fates unknown. On one hand, ramming a spaceship with your own is logically going to cause your death the majority of the time, but on the other, it mirrors a separate character doing the same stunt earlier in the series and living.
• The Black Arrow: During the Battle of Shoreby, Dick Shelton catches a brief glimpse of Lord Risingham and Richard Plantagenet squaring off. Dick does not see Risingham again, but he firmly believes the man got killed in battle.
• In Blood Meridian, this happens to two of the last survivors of Glanton's gang, Tobin and the Kid. Tobin and the Kid split up in San Francisco intending to meet back up, but the Kid is never able to find Tobin again and eventually stops looking for him. Many years later, the Kid (now the Man) encounters Judge Holden again, and Holden later catches him by surprise in an outhouse. All that seems certain is that something horrible ends up in the outhouse which shocks onlookers, and Holden walks away from the encounter scot-free.
• Boone's Lick: Grandpa Crackenthorpe gets washed off the riverboat one night and is never seen again. He probably drowned but may have just been separated from the others.
• Ciaphas Cain: Happens sometimes with minor characters unique to a single book.
  • Grenbow in Death and Glory- A unit he's commanding is swarmed and butchered (presumably but not explicitly to the last man) by the Orks but Grenbow himself isn't specifically shown being killed, unlike other named characters who were with him.
  • Sergeant Freel in Cain's Last Stand is this twice. Freel's last seen alive but panicked over a vox in the middle of a fight with Tyrannids and while his death isn't confirmed, Cain doubts that anyone could have survived long enough to make it back to where reinforcements were waiting. If Freel somehow did make it back to his own lines alive it's mentioned that most (although not all) of his unit was killed anyway in another engagement a couple days later.
• Cold Mountain:
  • In the book, although not in the film, when Teague and his men encounter Stobrod and Pangle on their way to hunt down another group of deserters hiding in the nearby caves. When they reappear for the final battle, one of the deserters is accompanying his group, having apparently undergone a Face–Heel Turn. It is unclear if the others were wiped out, but it's likely that at least some fell to the Home Guard's guns.
  • In the film, although not the book, Ingram spots a large group of escaped slaves in a field. They go down a road and a few seconds later there's shooting and screaming and Ingram has to run himself to avoid some Home Guard men riding that way. It's unclear all of the escaped slaves were killed, some were shot and others just recaptured, or some of them might have managed to escape while the others were being shot and/or recaptured.
• Discworld played with this in Thief of Time; on the Disc, characters know what awaits them after death. But in this story, the Glass Clock will kill you if you get near, but what will happen to you afterwards is uncertain. One of the characters gets too near...
• Dresden Files: In Battle Ground no one is sure what the hell happened to Chandler. He was hit by a teleport spell no one recognized and doesn't show up again even when everything is over. Additionally, Gregori Cristos of the Senior Council does not have his survival confirmed after the Final Battle and was last mentioned being badly wounded.
• Harry Potter:
  • In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Lavender is last seen on the ground with Fenrir Greyback, despite being in human form, trying to eat her. Hermione fights him off of her, but we never find out if Lavender is dead or merely injured, as she's not mentioned with the other fatalities. For what it's worth, she's clearly dead in the movie.
  • One of Harry's visions about Voldemort cuts off as he's forcing his way into Gregorovich's old house, quite possibly but not definitively killing the family that now lives there.
• In H. G. Wells' The Invisible Man, Colonel Adye is being held at gunpoint by Griffin. An attempt by Adye to grab the gun ends in either it going off or Griffin just flat out shooting him (Wells is unclear). He is described as falling down and not getting up. Kemp later tells Adye's men, "He's killed Adye. Shot him anyhow." So even Kemp, who witnessed the actual shooting, is uncertain if Adye is dead or not. He's never brought up again after this, until the epilogue involving Thomas Marvel; Adye is mentioned as having questioned him about the whereabouts of Griffin's notebooks, but Wells isn't clear if this happened before or after the shooting.
• At the end of I Sit Behind The Eyes, the eponymous Entity takes Emily over completely and destroys her soul. It is left ambiguous what happens to someone when this happens. All that is known is that she can no longer interrupt her possessor's sentences by calling out for help. There are three possibilities; she is either dead, erased or trapped forever inside her own mind and body. Luckily, she was a nasty piece of work, and the few people who are aware that she is now under new management could not care less what happened to her.
• Island in the Sea of Time: Iphigenia is last mentioned well before the downfall of Walker's empire, and it's never mentioned what happens to her and the child they have. Althea is referred to as "The last scion of the House of Wolf" shortly after other members of the family are killed, but that may just refer to her own knowledge.
• Johnny Catbiscuit: The first book does this with Philip, the retired superhero formerly known as Animal Protection Man. The villains note that he "told us where [a potion] was just before he 'went'", yet at the end, a man who looks suspiciously like him congratulates Wayne and says, "I knew you could do it!" even though Philip is apparently the only good guy who knows that Wayne is Johnny.
• Shel Silverstein's Lafcadio, The Lion Who Shot Back ends with a battle between a group of lions, led by the elderly lion who warned Lafcadio about humanity, and a group of hunters, led by the circus owner Finchfinger, who made Lafcadio a Civilized Animal. Lafcadio has an identity crisis and leaves, and the outcome of the battle is unknown. At least one of the hunters had to have survived the battle in order to tell the narrator Shelby what happened, though, since he explicitly says he never saw Lafcadio again.
• The Last Days of Krypton:
  • The surviving mooks and aristocratic younger sons from Zod's army are last mentioned as being kept under guard after his defeat. Whether any of them are confined to the Phantom Zone between Zod's trial and Krypton's destruction is unknown.
  • Gal-Eth and Or-Om are last mentioned as having joined No-Ton's failed Homeworld Evacuation efforts. However, they aren't mentioned in No-Ton's last scene, leaving a slight possibility that they may have gone to Argo City to seek the protection of its forcefield.
• The original book The Last Valley was based on has a couple examples:
  • Stoffel the bugler (one of the men the Captain leaves at the village in the book) just disappears one day. Presumably he was murdered, but since the villagers didn't bother to hide the body of the other man left behind once he was killed (and because Stoffel had married a local girl) they may have just left him tied up some place.
  • The mercenaries in general in the book. The Captain returns to the valley at the end saying mortally wounded in battle and saying everyone who left with him was killed but given the likely chaos of the battlefield it’s easy to question how he could have known that for sure, especially given his own need to quickly get out of there.
• Heavily downplayed in Love You Forever: The book ends with the mother in the hospital either dead or very close to death; the only ambiguity is if she's still alive right now.
• Moby-Dick: At the end, the titular whale sinks into the depths after being harpooned, famously dragging Captain Ahab down with him. Whether his wound is fatal is never made clear.
• In the Harry Turtledove short story "Must and Shall," the villains burn down the strip club where Lucy (one of the protagonist's informants) works, killing almost everyone inside. The protagonist feels certain that she must have died in the fire, but her body isn't specifically identified.
• The Power of Five: Several of Holly's fellow villagers, such as Sir Ian Ingram and the Flint's, aren't killed onscreen during the massacre, although it's heavily implied she was the only survivor.
• At the end of the penultimate Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry sequel, The Road to Memphis, Jeremy Simms, the only white child to be friends with the Logans, leaves to fight in World War II and it is mentioned that they never saw him again, implying that he died, but the book itself leaves his fate open-ended as it's perfectly possible that he simply didn't return to the South afterwards. In the Grand Finale of the Logan saga, All the Days Past, All the Days to Come, however, it's ultimately subverted when it's revealed that Jeremy did indeed die during World War II.
• RWBY: Fairy Tales of Remnant: In The Warrior in the Woods, when the hero finds the Warrior's home has been destroyed, he can't tell if it was destroyed by Grimm or humans. Her weapon has been left behind, but there's no sign of her. He never finds out what happened to her and doesn't know if she's alive or dead.
• In the prologue of The Secret Runners of New York, Becky is trapped in the Bad Future and left terrified that her pursuers are about to kill her. Still, she isn't killed onscreen, and other characters survive in the post-apocalyptic world for long periods.
• A Series of Unfortunate Events:
  • The Penultimate Peril ends with just about every single supporting character left in the Hotel Denouement, which has just been set on fire. Every single character is blindfolded at the time, and the majority of them can't decide whether or not to believe the Baudelaires when they say there's a fire. All the book says is that some of them will escape, and some of them will die, but any specific fates are left up to the reader.
  • In The End, the islanders are last seen infected by a deadly mushroom and Kit Snicket reveals that the Quagmire triplets, Hector, Captain Widdershins, Fernald and Fiona were caught by "The Great Unknown" but given its mysterious nature, it's unclear what happened to them. At the end, the Baudelaires themselves decide to leave the island with Kit's baby but Lemony Snicket lost track of them afterward and doesn't know for sure if they reached the mainland or died at sea.
• Shadow Children: Jen's chatroom pals Yolanda, Pat and Sean all showed a little reluctance at attending Jen's rally and it's unknown if they did attend and die with everyone else or just kept their heads down afterwards, although the fact that none of them answered when Luke checked Jen's chatroom afterwards implies the former.
• The Sister Verse and the Talons of Ruin implies this throughout the story. The villain has essentially become a god at the end, and you get the sense that there's very little hope that Singer's plan will actually work, given that the reader knows they're all trapped inside the Sister Verse.
• The ultimate fate of Major Len Creighton in The Stand is never revealed. His last "appearance" in the book is being heard over the radio talking to one of his officers as the United States starts collapsing due to the spread of The Virus. In the television mini-series adaptation his fate is less enigmatic as one of the soldiers at the base is obviously ill with the superflu... but even here Creighton is not sick the last time he is onscreen, raising the possibility he was one of the 0.5% immune to Captain Trips.
• The Supervillainy Saga: In "Merciless vs. Sidekick Girl", the eponymous supervillain wannabe (who had previously made a deal with an Eldritch Abomination), is pulled out of sight by otherworldly forces after being knocked out in a fight with the heroes. However, is is unclear whether she is being Dragged Off to Hell or her otherworldly patron is rescuing her from imprisonment for another battle.
• Star Wars Expanded Universe: From a Certain Point of View short story "Laina" is about a Rebel soldier, stationed on Yavin 4, who decides to send his young daughter, the titular character, away from the moon with her aunts for her own safety. Their destination? Alderaan. The story ends with no confirmation as to whether or not the three actually made it to the planet before the Death Star or not.
• Tolkien's Legendarium:
  • The Lord of the Rings: Shelob is last seen retreating to her lair after being badly wounded in a fight with Sam. The text never makes it clear whether she managed to recuperate or succumbed to her injuries. Mount Doom's eruption not long afterwards only raises further questions as to her survival.
  • The Silmarillion:
    • Eluréd and Elurín were abandoned in the forest. Maedhros tried to find them but couldn't. No one knows what happened to them, but since they were only about six years old their chances of survival don't look good (though in one version of the story the forest animals led them to safety).
    • Maglor and Daeron, two of the greatest Elven minstrels, independently wandered off, Walking the Earth and singing laments. It's unknown what happened to them after the First Age; neither ever appears again.
    • Mablung, one of Thingol's captains. He may have died when the Dwarves attacked Doriath, or he may have survived that and the Second Kinslaying only to die in the Third Kinslaying, or he may have survived all of the above; we just don't know.
  • Beren and Lúthien: Thuringwethil is an odd case. She herself never appears; Lúthien steals her skin to follow Beren. Whether this means she's dead, or whether she's still around somewhere is uncertain.
  • The Fall of Gondolin: Salgant is last seen bunkering in his home when the battle begins. As the refugees are fleeing towards the hills, Ëarendil asks where is Salgant, since the man used to play with him and even tell him tales. But nobody knows what happened to him: Maybe he was burned to death inside his own home, maybe he was captured and made a slave.
    But none could say where Salgant was, nor can they now. Mayhap he was whelmed by fire upon his bed; yet some have it that he was taken captive to the halls of Melko and made his buffoon – and this is an ill fate for a noble of the good race of the Gnomes. Then was Eärendel sad at that, and walked beside his mother in silence.''
• In Warrior Cats, there are a couple times when a character is mentioned as "lying motionless" during a battle, one of the most notable being Cloudtail in The Last Hope — a somewhat major character. There's also the case of the elders who stayed behind instead of going to their new home. Did they eke out a life in RiverClan territory, accept food from humans, or die from starvation or the humans' machines?
• Wet Desert: Tracking Down a Terrorist on the Colorado River:
  • As the Crawfords travel down the draining Lake Powell, they encounter a capsized boat with an empty life jacket. There is nobody to be seen and Julie is sure the boat's passengers are dead.
  • When David, Afram and Judy can no longer hold on their raft, it and the other passengers are swept off the cliff where it had stranded and down the Colorado river towards Granite Narrows where the flood has probably formed a large waterfall. Keller and the others try to control the raft for some moments more before he is thrown off in a waterfall. The text ends with a mention of how he falls into the water and loses his senses. It is later revealed that their bodies and life jackets were found beneath Granite Narrows.
• When Worlds Collide: In addition to the four rockets confirmed to have made it to Bronson Beta and the doomed French rocket, the first book mentions that China, South Africa, Australia, Argentina, and Italy are all working on evacuation rockets. Dr. Hendron estimates that a total of five rockets would probably survive, but none of the others appear on Bronson Beta. While the heroes speculate they were all destroyed, some of them might have made it and simply landed too far away to be immediately detected.

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