And the Adventure Continues

Superman: A head start? You're getting soft in your old age...
Batman: Don't you have a tall building to go leap?
Wonder Woman: ...And the adventure continues...
[everyone starts running]

— Justice League Unlimited, cueing the Curtain Call

After a long fight, the Big Bad is finally defeated, his Evil Plan thwarted, his legions of robotic minions smashed to pieces, his living ones have been safely thrown in jail, The Dragon is dead, and the Quirky Miniboss Squad has decided to go straight and make a new life for themselves.

Congratulations are given, the dead are mourned, the Unresolved Sexual Tension is resolved (or is about to be)...

Uh-oh, there's another call for help! The Starscream (Or why not, a brand new Big Bad?) is causing trouble! No rest for the virtuous heroes, it's time to spring back into action!

THE END

Say what now?

Kind of a non-ending, we know. This kind of ending can come when a series is canceled before the author can plan out a full ending. Other times it's deliberate, included as a way for the writers to quickly create an ideal continuation point in the event that the opportunity for a sequel arrives. Some stories just end before they can reach the Happily Ever After point. Sometimes, there is no Happily Ever After. Or it may be meant to imply that the adventuring life is their Happily Ever After, especially if they have recently contemplated quitting and decided against it, or recently regained their ability to continue.

The mood can range anywhere from melancholy to "Oh boy, a chance for more fun!" Out-of-universe, of course, it serves as a more satisfying take on That's All, Folks!.

The purpose behind this idea is to explain that the world that these characters inhabit is much, much larger than the stories that have been written about them. These characters, and all of their friends and foes that were encountered as we watched, continue on living their lives even if we aren't watching the story unfold. We can relax, knowing that they're still out there somewhere, still fighting the good fight, since that's how we saw them last.

Sort of like Here We Go Again!, but the tone is usually more optimistic than the good-natured resignation of the former. The series acts as a window into the lives of the characters, and though it may be time for the audience (or the writer) to move on, their adventures or struggles will continue. In this case, there's the implication that the worst is over, and despite the danger, things will be all right for them from now on. (Of course, as the Expanded Universe reveals all too often, sometimes they're not.)

There have been several adventure stories that eliminate any sense of subtlety by featuring this phrase at the end but Tropes Are Tools.

In the case of video games this kind of "ending" can actually be quite literal, since there are quite a few games out there that have multiple paths the onscreen protagonists can take, and even after they've "won" on one path, they could still "lose" on any or all of the other paths.

Compare Cliffhanger, Sequel Hook, Bolivian Army Ending, End-of-Series Awareness, and So What Do We Do Now?. If a work ends with more finality, but an on-screen caption promotes the next installment, see "Will Return" Caption. This trope is the polar opposite of the Grand Finale. Can potentially serve as a Sequel Hook, should the creators ever decide to make more. Contrast Little Did I Know, when the adventure to come is "foreshadowed" by the narration.

To Fanfic or Expanded Universe writers, this can instead be like a blank check and a note saying "Go nuts!"

As this is an Ending Trope, unmarked spoilers abound. Beware.

noreallife

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Examples:

Animation

• Miniforce ends with the team preparing to leave Bluebell Village after defeating Pascal but are told to stay in case a new threat comes around.

Anime & Manga

• AKB0048 ends with AKB retaking Akibastar and determined to keep entertainment alive. However, despite the major setback, DES is still active.
• The first season of Aggretsuko ends with the title character breaking up with her bad boyfriend (and possibly getting a better one), on the surprisingly tender advice of her otherwise shitty boss, and learning to have realistic expectations. She returns to work with a renewed sense of purpose, knowing that she’s already stronger than yesterday! Then her boss chews her out for the pettiest of reasons, still a dick, and her Rage song begins to play...
• AKIRA ends with Kaneda and his gang riding back into the ruins of Neo-Tokyo with the premonition of a brighter future.
• Alice In Sexland ends with Alice choosing to have the King of Hearts reign the realm for now, since she doesn't want to assume the role of the new Queen yet. Instead, she chooses to continue exploring the various locations in Sexland along with her friends, Bunny and Chessie.
• Amagi Brilliant Park: Per his agreement of running the park, Seiya quits being the manager at the end of episode 12 after the July 31st deadline. Everyone seems depressed at it though, including him. His aunt seems shocked that he quit, and then tells him that he seemed genuinely happy while working there. As Seiya thinks it over, he reconsiders his decision to quit, and goes back the next day, claiming that the park will fall into ruins without his intervention. Despite his claims, everyone is happy he's back, and they all look forward to attracting more visitors as the park opens up for business.
• Angel Densetsu wraps up the UST and gives us everyone finally acknowledging they are Kitano's True Companions, but the characters' lives are still going on.
• In AR∀GO: City of London Police's Special Crimes Investigator, the main villain defeated, but Seth is trapped in something between a Lotus-Eater Machine and a Fate Worse than Death. The series ends with Arago and the remaining nakama going off to find a way to set him free.
• Astra Lost in Space: Seven years after the kids return to planet Astra, an adult Kanata, Zack and Charce embark on a journey to explore the far reaches of space on the new and improved Astra spaceship
• Ayane's High Kick ends with Kunimitsu grabbing Ayane for another kickboxing match.
• Azumanga Daioh offers a very sedate example. The girls' time at high school is over, they're going to various colleges, the youngest, Chiyo, is moving to America, and it looks like the time spent with these characters is coming to a close, as the older girls walk off and Chiyo watches them go...before they call to her to join them, so they can spend the day at the local amusement park, and Chiyo realizes that while this part of their lives might be over, they'll always be together.
• BNA: Brand New Animal ends with the heroes managing to provide a cure for Nirvasyl Syndrome to the Beastmen population without having them lose their beastmen identities. After averting catastrophe, Mayor Rose vows to change Anima City for the better, starting with allowing humans to enter the city so that they and beastmen can coexist in peace and while Shirou may not like it, he'll do his best to support her. Michiru and Nazuna decide to stay in Anima City so that they can share their experiences as humans and beastmen to settle relations between the two groups.
• Baccano!'s anime adaptation has a three-part OVA wrap-up that ends many character arcs and putting most of our questions to rest (it even tells us What Happened to the Mouse?). However, rather than end on the same note as the main series, saying "Many Birthdays To Come" (It Makes Sense in Context), which came across as cheerfully final, the OVA ending says the traditional "What's Next On Baccano!", implying the characters' continued adventures. Despite this, the anime never received a second season due to low ratings and DVD sales.
• Season 2 of The Big O seems to close with Reset Button Ending, with Roger on his way to yet another negotiation. The sight of Angel and Dorothy watching him drive by, however, indicates that things aren't going to go exactly the same way.
• Catnapped! ends with Toriyasu and Meeko having stopped Buburina and saved Papadoll, only for the cats to come back seeking their help again.
• Cop Craft ends with Kei and Tilarna having solved the recent case when they get another call, so they immediately run to their car and drive off.
• Cyborg 009: The God's War OVA ends with the team preparing to fight Himiko and her demon forces.
• Dai-Guard ends with it being almost explicitly stated that the Heterodyne will never stop attacking, but now that people have the proper methods to deal with them it's just another part of life.
• Dark Cat ends with Hyoi and Ryoi continuing on in their mission of protecting the human world from evil.
• Desert Rose ends with Mariko getting her revenge and finally killing Gryphon. But despite achieving her goal, Mariko decides to continue working in CAT, recognizing that even though her archenemy is dead, there will always be "another Gryphon" on the horizon to commit more terrorism.
• Detective School Q ends with the entirety of Q-class being appointed as Morihiko Dan's successors after they manage to defeat Pluto and see the death of its leader and founder, King Hades. The one-shot sequel, Detective School Q Premium ends with the class getting called back from their vacation because one of its surviving members, Cerberus, has resurrected the group, and is planning to resume their villainous activities. The last scene of the series ends with the detectives getting ready to face down their nemesis once again.
• Devil Hunter Yohko:
  • Episode 5 Hell on Earth ends with Yohko turning in her ring, thinking that devils will no longer come to Earth since Tokima has been defeated. But her grandmother tells her that another demon nemesis of their family still exists and Yohko will one day have to fight him. Azusa then runs in to report that a demon is attacking a construction site, forcing Yohko to go fight it.
  • Episode 6 Double Jeopardy ends with Yohko and Ayako saying goodbye and promising to meet again.
• Devil May Cry: The Animated Series ends with Dante, Trish, and Lady driving off to their next demon hunting mission.
• The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.: The last regular chapter closes on Saiki and friends entering their third year together, and from the looks of things the wackiness isn't over yet.
• Dragon Ball:
  • Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z end with Goku going off to train with Uub, and the author promising that they have more adventures, which they solve somehow.
  • Dragon Ball GT closes it more definitely. Maybe. But since that's no longer canon...
  • The first part of Dragon Ball Super closes off this way, as well as pulling a Book Ends.
    Narrator: The endless challenge to go beyond all limits continues. When a new, powerful unknown enemy appears, Goku and his friends' adventures will begin again. Until then, a brief parting.
• Dragon Goes House-Hunting ends with Letty helping Nell reconcile with her father, then leaving with Diaria and Pip to continue their home-hunting quest.
• Dragon Half ends with Mink and Dick about to get married when Rufa shows up talking about the rise of a new Demon Lord trying to pick up where Azatodeth left off. So the two postpone their wedding to go on a quest to stop him - at which point all of Mink's other remaining enemies decide to go back to trying to kill Mink for no explained reason. The following chapter is a Distant Epilogue about Mink and Dick's bratty daughter being taught a lesson in compassion by Rufa.
• Eyeshield 21 ends with a Time Skip to Sena's college years, where he joins the Enma University football team and prepares to compete in the Rice Bowl.
• Fairy Tail ends with the main cast embarking on a "century quest" (i.e. a mission that hasn't been completed in the past hundred years), showing that even with the likes of Zeref and Acnologia gone, there will still be adventures for the heroes to go on. Said "century quest" is even the springboard for the sequel manga.
• Fatal Fury: Devil Street of Horror: After the demise of the Martial Emperor, Terry and company set off for their "Next Battle Stage".
• Fist of the North Star ended with Kenshiro wandering through the wasteland, defeating bandits in his usual fashion and saving the innocent people who were attacked by them.
• Flint the Time Detective ended with the Goldfish Poop Gang escaping with a time traveling vehicle and the heroes chasing them down.
• Franken Fran: After getting trapped in a sunken ship and dreaming about a party where every single previous character appears, including the Professor, Fran gets rescued and goes back to the daily grind.
• Future GPX Cyber Formula ended Sin this way. Naturally, being a series about Formula One in the near future, it means Hayato continues racing and almost all the other characters, as they do in the real world, shuffle about from team to team and prepare for the next racing season.
• The Distant Finale of Gaiking: Legend of Daiku Maryu showed the cast five years in the future. Puria and her cronies, Naoto, and Daiya are living happy lives on Earth, but Daiku Maryu's tentative forays into space are suddenly placed in peril when alien monsters attack. Daiya's Flame Gridder grows hot, signalling that the mechanical dragon is close, and it swoops down and plucks him from the ground, and together they return to fight the monsters. Roll credits.
• Ghost in the Shell: The manga and film adaptation both end with Motoko (fused with the Puppet Master) standing on a hill, with a full view of the city below, saying "the net is vast and infinite". Her story does continue in the sequels: the film series and manga diverge but share the common thread of Motoko permanently becoming an intelligence inhabiting the Internet without favoring a single physical body.
• Giant Killing ended the series no more than half way into the season so it was either this or possibly a Sequel Hook.
• Gintama ends with the final chapter being a Distant Finale of an awakened Tama listening to a posthumous recording of Shinpachi revealing what happened to the Gintama cast during the weeks/months after the previous chapter. While the future world she sees was an illusion created by her younger copy at the behest of a spiteful Hasegawa, she does end the manga watching the Yorozuya going on their next job.
• Godannar ends with a Mimetic Beast attack, just when the entire restored force happens to all be in one spot.
• Goku: Midnight Eye: After killing Cassandra the Enchantress, the shapeshifting villainess of the manga's final arc, Goku is briefly seen reflecting on the experience before he polevaults into a cityscape for more adventures.
• Golden Boy ends with Kintaro riding off into the sunset, pursued by the girls he met throughout the series.
• Gun Blaze West was Cut Short due to low readership, so it has this kind of ending; it ends with Viu and his allies managing to pass the Baron's test and being permitted to continue on to GBW. An Indian guide comes to pick them up on buffaloes and they ride on to the next challenge. But not before Viu leaves his now damaged gun behind for his mentor Marcus to find so he can follow after them.
• Thanks to unfortunate real-life circumstances, it is highly unlikely that a third season of the Haruhi Suzumiya anime will ever be made, thereby causing the anime adaptation of the novels to have this kind of ending— The Movie being an adaptation of the fourth novel The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, which ends with Kyon realizing that he actually likes all of the SOS Brigade's crazy adventures, which in the novels started his Character Development to actually caring about the world around him. The anime keeps this interpretation, but with the implication that, though the heroes still have many more adventures ahead of them, we don't get to see what those adventures are.
• Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku:
  • Nurugai and Shion wander north in search of Nurugai's clan in the epilogue, having adventures along the way.
  • The Bandit Brothers also survive their battles and move to Hong Kong to seek their fortunes there.
  • Also, in a short one pager the Tensen survive in the future, with what looks like Mei as well.
• HEROMAN ends with Dr. Minami and his gang breaking out of prison. There's a TO BE CONTINUED?.
• Holy Corpse Rising ends with Nikola and his harem managing to end the war between humans and witches. Then they go on a new journey and his harem bickers as usual.
• Hunter × Hunter: How the 2011 anime ends, due to the manga still being written during its production. Killua travels the world with Alluka, Leorio is still studying to become a doctor and Kurapika seeks out the remaining scarlet eyes. Except for Gon, whose adventure (meeting Ging) seems to now be over.
• Hybrid × Heart Magias Academy Ataraxia: The manga version ends this way since it only covers up to volume 3 of the light novels. After Kizuna defeats Grabel, he has an orgy with his harem so they can power up and prepare for the next invasion by the Batlantis Empire.
• The iDOLM@STER—The characters keep stressing that even though 765 Pro is a huge success, this is only the beginning for them. Plus, they're financially back at square zero after getting scammed by Kuroi.
• The ending of the Inuyasha anime is like this because it Overtook the Manga. Five years later, when the manga finally did end, a new anime season was made and wrapped the story up appropriately.
• Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress ends with Ikoma killing the Big Bad, but not before the capital of Kongokaku Station is overrun by Kabane. The Iron Fortress and its crew manage to escape the station in one piece and ride off into the sunset towards an uncertain but hopeful future.
• The Kawai Complex Guide to Manors and Hostel Behavior: The last page of the manga ends on another morning in Kawai house, implying that their strange and wacky days will keep going on.
• The anime adaption of Kekkaishi ends with Kokoburo completely destroyed and Yoshimori and the others returning to the real world. Tokine was worried sick after Yoshimori impulsively uses a hidden power to destroy Kaguro, and the entire series wraps up with Yoshimori and Tokine at Karasumori where they continue to stop Ayakashi from claiming it. The manga continues past it and ends more conclusively.
• Kero Kero Chime ends with the pages of the book that could have restored the main character from his curse scattered once again in the process of stopping the Big Bad, and the main cast heading out to gather them all over again.
• Love After World Domination ends with another battle against a supervillain organization but GEKKO are now the heroes.
• Lupin III: Unlikely to ever end in any other way.
  • A lot of Lupin III stuff ends like this. The very final chapter of the original manga ends with Lupin destroying his hideout and mentioning that he's hard at work on his next adventure.
  • The Castle of Cagliostro: the movie ends with Lupin driving off into the sunset, chased by Zenigata, showing that their ending is to continue doing this.
  • The board game of Lupin III explicitly states that the players are recreating a heist by Lupin; one of the many he has attempted.
• Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic ends pretty conclusively: David is finally defeated and the Sacred Palace and Dungeons are destroyed, which eliminates the magi and metal vessel systems, but also prevents the world's destruction. The geography of the world has been permanently changed as well, however, leading to the world leaders debating on how to decide new borders, and Aladin going of to explore the new world with Alibaba and Morgiana (who also finally get married).
• Magic Knight Rayearth: The manga ends with Hikaru, Umi and Fuu returning to Cephiro to visit their friends and help the neighboring planets with their problems.
• The first series of Magical Circle Guru-Guru concludes with Nike and Kukuiri at the door of the final Boss Room, before deciding, in true RPG fashion, that they're having too much of a good time and are going to go off and level up some more – much to the frustration of said final boss, who was anticipating some form of closure.
• Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's ends with the three Aces rushing off to a mission. Turned out to be a Sequel Hook for the A's to StrikerS manga.
• Magical Girl Ore ends with the demon threat taken care of and Saki and Sakuyo retiring their macho shoujo idol image to go back to what they were; a struggling idol group trying to hit the big time. However, that doesn't mean they're done being Magical Girls...
• Majokko Megchan ends with Meg and Non being sent back to Earth for further training.
• Matoi the Sacred Slayer ends with Matoi managing to find her mother and bring her back home. She gets to live with both her parents, and she believes she no longer has the power to be an Exorcist girl. However, when Yuma gets a call about new demons appearing, it turns out Matoi hasn't lost her powers after all, and Yuma drags her with her on their next adventure.
• Michiko & Hatchin, with Hatchin leaving her new home with her baby daughter and reuniting with Michiko, years after the initial story.
  "Michiko. How far will we go next?"
• Mink ends with Kyo and Cyber Security dealt with and Mink choosing to continue being an idol with a Secret Identity, with the only difference being that Motoharu knows her identity now and is in an under-the-table relationship with her.
• Mon Colle Knights ends in a similar way to Flint The Time Detective, with the Big Bad beaten but the Goldfish Poop Gang getting away (albeit a bit embarrassingly) and the six treasures scattered to the winds and waiting to be found again.
• More Than a Married Couple, But Not Lovers ends with both main couples reaching the top ten and therefore are now able to switch partners if they so choose. However, Akari has gotten over her longtime crush on Minami and now wholeheartedly wants to stay with Jiro, while Shiori has also made her intentions clear as well, leaving the choice up to Jiro.
• The first season of The Mysterious Cities of Gold ends like this, with Esteban, Tao and Zia setting off on the Golden Condor to find the remaining six Cities of Gold.
• Outlaw Star's crew kicked ass, chewed gum, ran out of gum, ran out of ass. Once the Cat Girl went home, they decided it was time to go get some more gum.
• Because the anime had not been renewed for another season at the time, season 3 of Overlord (2012) ends with Ainz Ooal Gown slaughtering the Re-Estize Kingdom's army, including Gazef Stronoff, and taking control of E-Rantel, where he forces Momon into servitude by threatening the lives of the city's people, including children. With his enemies and allies alike having reached the Despair Event Horizon and no one left to defeat him, Ainz officially forms the Sorcerous Kingdom of Nazarick to continue his quest of world domination...cue a Smash to Black with the words "AND THE STORY GOES ON"
• Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt combines this with a Gainax Ending—after defeating Corset and saving Daten City, Stocking suddenly kills Panty and Garterbelt before slicing Panty up into 666 pieces, revealing that she was actually a demon all along despite this making even less sense than most of the story. Corset then emerges from Brief's penis and leaves with Stocking, declaring that he will use Panty's remains as a breadcrumb trail to lead Brief to Oten City, where there is another gateway to Hell. Then Garterbelt comes back.
  [Beat]
  Garterbelt: ...ahem. Go forth, Brief and Chuck! Onward!
• Pokémon RéBURST ends with Ryouga setting off on a new adventure with his friends, having found a place where he can free Zekrom from his Burst Heart.
• Pokémon: The Series ended with Ash realizing that To Be a Master means more than just being the very best, like no one ever was but rather continuing to see all the world and its Pokémon have to offer. After 26 years the series ends with him leaving Pallet Town once more to resume Walking the Earth. This also applies to Team Rocket, who reunite and are implied to have continued pursuing Ash and his Pikachu.
• The final episode of Popotan has its main characters reunite to continue time travelling. The very last shot sees them arriving in a time period where one of the previously seen side characters has grown up from teenager to adult.
• The final episode of Pretty Sammy TV/Magical Project S has Tsunami give Sasami an upgraded baton to replace the one that she lost earlier in the episode so she and Misao can stop a problem on Mars — namely Romio attempting to take over Mars.
• In Princess Princess the manga, the anime and the TV series all end with their respective problems solved, but the job of the princesses continue.
• Project A-Ko:
  • The first movie ends with A-ko and C-ko heading to school where B-ko is waiting for another fight.
  • Uncivil Wars ends with A-ko and B-ko, having returned C-ko to her father and saved the multiverse, going off to confront Maruten for taking all the credit.
• Psycho-Pass:
  • The series ends both seasons with this where the Sibyl System remains standing while new teammates join Akane's team and Kougami flees from Japan. Psycho-Pass: The Movie ends the same with Kougami still on the run and Akane going back to Japan to continue her work. The Sibyl System still exists... except now it's in the process of expanding its control throughout the whole world.
  • Psycho-Pass 3: First Inspector, a sequel movie to Season 3, ends with Bifrost's collapse and Akane being free from confinement and reuniting with Kougami. The Stinger has Akane telling Arata and Kei about the case related to the deaths of Arata's father and Kei's brother.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica ends with the world remade by Madoka's wish into a world without witches, but with wraiths in their place that, similarly, serve as an outlet for humanity's despair and a power source that can reverse entropy. However, magical girls now simply disappear when their Soul Gems are depleted, and Homura continues to fight on in spite of Madoka's absence, inspired by her faith in humanity rather than the desire to save her. There is an ambiguously apocalyptic-looking Distant Finale Stinger, but that scene was evidently not meant to be taken literally.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion, does this with extreme ambiguity. Homura de-powers Madoka so she can rewrite the world into heaven for the magical girls, and hell for the Incubators. But Sayaka, and seemingly Homura herself, hates her Well-Intentioned Extremist methods, and some of the other girls would probably agree if they didn't have Laser-Guided Amnesia. She says outright that she can't contain Madoka's power forever and that a, er, rebellion will likely occur. Another sequel to wrap this up is inevitable, but for now, it's basically a universe-sized chunk of Fanfic Fuel (comments from the creators imply this was intentional).
• Ranma ½ ends with the wedding bombed out and Ranma's cure lost, just like every other time something like that happens, the reader is told that things will continue to go on as they have, although there is at least some implication that Ranma and Akane have grown closer.
• Reborn! (2004) closes out this way, after all the opponents and obstacles the heroes go through. Tsuna still can't bring himself to tell his love interest he loves her nor decide if he truly will lead his mafia family. Due to this, Reborn decides to stick around for a while longer and continue tutoring him.
• Revolutionary Girl Utena ends with Anthy leaving Ohtori Academy at long last to go search for the now-missing Utena.
• Rosario + Vampire ends with Tsukune training under Issa and the gang going about their usual antics.
• The final episode of Sands of Destruction ends with Kyrie realizing who he really is, nearly destroying the world before Morte stops him. The two of them decide that, rather than turning everything to sand (as was her original idea), they'll travel the world with Taupy and help put an end to the Fantastic Racism to make it a better place.
• SD Gundam Force ends with the members of the Gundam Force being called once again to save another world in danger.
• Science Fell in Love, So I Tried to Prove it: Even after sharing a kiss of the highest theoretical value, and seeing that their Oxytocin values were much higher during this event than under any other circumstance, Himuro and Yukimura continue their research into romance. They have to repeat their experiments for statistical validity, you know, so they need to kiss many more times. Kanade rolls her eyes and leaves them to their science-type flirting.
  • Season 2 Bookends the series when Himuro says that Kanade might be in love with Yukimura. Ibarada comments that things might be getting interesting again at their lab.
• Most versions of Slayers end this way, especially the anime. The only time it could be averted is at the end of the novels, where Gourry insists on coming to Lina's home kingdom. His reason for wanting to do this is ambiguous.
• Sonic X combines this with Bittersweet Ending. Chris is sent back home to Earth with no chance of returning while Eggman continues his plans to build the Eggman Empire, with Sonic and his friends getting ready to stop him.
• Speed Racer ends with Speed taking off in the Mach 5 in search of his next race.
• Spider Riders ends with the 7 Riders heading off for their next adventure, Mantid having used the Oracle's power to make him human again and reunite him with his lost love, and Quake leaving with the Lost Mariner.
• SPY×FAMILY CODE: White ends with the family going to the southern regions to learn the new judge's favorite food (fortunately, Bond foresees nothing but a normal, happy family vacation).
• Super Atragon: The OVA ends with the Ra, repaired after her huge battle against the Liberty and half the subterranean race's weaponry, launching out towards the gigantic hole in Antartica left by the emergence of the black cylinders. Appropriately enough, the view is of the Ra going into the sunset.
• The Sword Art Online anime ends with the cast deciding to run through the newly recreated Aincrad castle from start to finish, only this time without the Death Game aspect.
• Tiger & Bunny ends with Kotetsu having lost his powers, forcing him to retire, but Barnaby swears to keep being a superhero to honor him.
• The Tokyo Mew Mew anime ends this way, with the girls returning to the cafe and Ryou announces there's a new threat they have to fight.
• The Toonami programming block ends with a simple LATER. More heartwarmingly, the original run also ended this way, more details on that page.
• Transformers: Cybertron, the final installment of the Unicron Trilogy, ends this way. The Autobot starships leave Earth, ready to continue their space bridge project and spread life across the universe while continuing their adventures, while the four planets with Transformer life continue to thrive and a team of Autobots hunts down the last (non comic relief) Decepticon, Starscream.
• Tsubasa Chronicle. The epic legendary Mind Screw might have been in danger of making something approaching sense had there been any other kind of ending.
• Vampire Hunter D and the sequel 'Bloodlust' end with D riding off into the distance to find and help others who are being oppressed by vampires.
• Wonder Egg Priority: At the end of the special, Ai goes back into the Dream World, wanting to see Neiru again. She then ends the special reintroducing herself to Acca and Ura-Acca before posing and smiling in a Freeze-Frame Ending.
• The second season of the anime for The World God Only Knows ends this way, with Elsie running up to tell Keima about a large number of Runaway Spirits being detected in the area, followed by a montage of the next several capture targets from the manga.
• The anime adaptation of Yakitate!! Japan ends when Kazuma vows to keep experimenting to create the perfect Ja-pan. He eventually does, but that's only in the manga, when he uses ancient Japanese Wheat flour from his grandfather, Umajirou, along with whipped egg whites, grated Japanese mountain yam, and ground sesame seeds.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! ends with Pharaoh Atem passing on to the afterlife after being defeated by Yugi, but Yugi and his friends are able to move on and live their lives with confidence. In the final scene (unfortunately cut from the English dub), Yugi comments the Pharaoh's story is finished, but his story is just beginning.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! GX ends with Judai regaining his passion for dueling by dueling Yugi and having fun. He decides to go on a new adventure with Yubel, Pharaoh the Cat, and Daitokuji for company, promising to meet more great duelists and have fun along the way.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds ends with the group going their separate ways as they all have lives to live, but promising to always remain friends. Yusei swears that he will continue to protect Neo Domino City, and they will all do their best to avert the Bad Future Z-one, Paradox, Aporia, and Antinomy came from.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL ends with the universe saved and everybody who was killed in the final battle revived thanks to Yuma and Astral's efforts. Most shocking at all, Yuma and Kotori were together, the first time ever a relationship in the franchise had worked out. Then they hear that the Astral World is being attacked by a new threat, and everybody volunteers to travel there and help.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V ends with Yuya finally defeating Reiji and passing the test to become a Pro Duelist. Even better, his victory unites the Four Dimensions, restores Yuzu and her counterparts to life, and brings Reira out of her BSOD. Just as everybody starts to relax, Yuya's father Yusho shows up and warns Yuya not to get complacent, as there is always a new level for a duelist and entertainer to reach. Yuya happily accepts his father's challenge and they prepare to duel.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS ends with Yusaku regretfully defeating and terminating Ai at his request. Three months later, everyone starts to heal and move on with their lives and Yusaku goes on a new journey inside Link VRAINS.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! SEVENS ends with Yuga defeating Otes, but seemingly sacrificing himself and the concept of Rush Duels as he is lost in space. Two years later, everyone starts to move on with their lives and work to make duels fun again. Yuga suddenly returns from space and brings back Rush Duels. Yuga and his rival Luke happily prepare to duel.
• Zombiepowder. ends with Gamma Akutabi and C.T. Smith leaving Elwood and Wolfina to continue their quest, with no word on whether the surgery to extract the Ring of the Dead from Wolfina's brother was successful.

Comic Books

• Happens a lot in superhero comics, especially ones published by DC and Marvel. Since almost all their series are Long-Runners which go on indefinitely, many departing writers finish off their runs on a particular hero's title with this trope; thus putting a capstone on their own run on the character while assuring readers that the hero will be back with new adventures (written by someone else) next month.
• The final issue of The Bad Eggs ends with Ript and Claude in a new time era where humans are present. Neither of them are remotely upset, and they're ready to go on more adventures in their new jungle. Provided the humans don't kill them first...
• Batgirl (2009): The final line is Stephanie Brown's narration as she swings into the Gotham night for her next adventure.
  "Here we go."
• Batman: Batman (Grant Morrison) ends in an unusually somber example of this, with the implication being that Batman will never be able to escape the superhero lifestyle.
• The Distant Finale of Beast Wars: Uprising ends with a brief scene of two Cybertronian ships arriving in an unknown location and promptly crashing on a mysterious blue-green planet. The captain of the good ship, a mere exploration vessel, takes stock of just how out of his depths he is, but vows to do whatever it takes to get them all home. The last line is the narration stating thus: "Little did he know."
• This type of ending is mocked in The Boys. Jack From Jupiter says, of the winners of "Best New Team", "There's a 'Feels more like a beginning' waiting to happen if I ever saw one", going on to say that when the team inevitably break up and begin their long, painful slide in obscurity and worse, the comic book always ends with one of them "gazing off-panel" and saying that, for an end, it feels more like a beginning.
• Brute Force: The series ends with Frost and Heavy Metal defeated but Pierce tells Brute Force they still have a whole planet to clean up.
• At the end of the Camelot 3000 comic series, King Arthur is dead and the surviving knights set about rebuilding the civilization of Earth. Meanwhile, on some distant planet, a small alien creature stumbles across Arthur's sword Excalibur (which it then wields against a group of aliens who had been pursuing it) as we are told "The road goes ever on..."
• Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew! ends with Little Cheese being elected as the team's newest member.
• Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe: Again ends with Deadpool setting off to kill all of the remaining villains after possibly killing the Red Skull.
• Dial H, the New 52 version of Dial H for Hero, ended part way between this and Bittersweet Ending, with the team of characters having defeated their main enemies, but being left in a devastated universe which they could potentially escape, but with only a remote chance of getting back to their original homes.
• The Doctor Who Magazine Eighth Doctor comics ended like this. (They had been planning to have the Eighth Doctor die and turn into Christopher Eccleston, but then it was decided that the Ninth Doctor comics would be strictly tied into TV continuity.)
• Forgotten Realms: The final issue ends with the main characters, having just mourned the loss of their ship, vowing to get a new one and continue their adventures together.
• At the end of the SLG Gargoyles comic book sequel series, Goliath is almost giddy that his clan has just doubled in size in less than half an hour with the arrival of an older Brooklyn and his family from their timedancing adventures as well as Coldstone and Coldfire to stay. At that, the call that The Pack is on the loose again is not merely an emergency to attend to for Goliath, but also a moment of celebration as the whole clan takes off to kick bad guy butt together with relish.
• Invincible: Chapter 144 shows that while things got much better, Mark and his family still had plenty to do for hundreds of years into the future.
• Jurassic Strike Force 5 ends with the Strike Force foiling Zalex's plan to destroy Washington D.C. and they decide to stick around in case he and the Reptilians come back.
• Just Imagine... Stan Lee Creating the DC Universe ends with Crisis defeated, Atom joining the Justice League and the team ready to face whatever comes next.
• JLA (1997): Having just saved the entire universe from a rampaging cosmic war machine, the League are given a few precious minutes to relax before receiving word that another of their old enemies is up to no good. Batman sighs, but Superman gives him a grin and says "Come on, Bruce. You know you love it."
• King Thor: The miniseries ends with the present-day Lord Librarian showing his apprentice Shadrak some of Thor's future adventures leading up to him becoming All-Father Thor, as well as some of the future adventures of the Goddesses of Thunder.
• Klaus (Grant Morrison) ends with Klaus promising to come back every year to deliver presents to Grimsvig. When Jonas points out how much time Klaus has and how big the world is, Klaus implies he will extend his promise to the rest of the world. He eventually gave up this mission when the population got too big. Plus, parents were already buying gifts for their children anyways.
• The Mice Templar: Rather than bring Karic into the realms beyond life, Wotan brings him over the seemingly impassable mountains at the edge of the comic's lands, to a new land where the situation of the comic's plot is reversed: a cruel Mice Templar dictatorship (of mice, naitch) represses a realm of rats. Karic is healed/reborn to bring justice to the situation and to pull the Templar there back from the darkness that has consumed them, and it's hinted that Ankara learns of this through a dream and will cross the mountains to reunite with her love.
• Pathfinder: Worldscape ends quite literally this way, when the Pathfinders help save The Multiverse and when returned to their homeworld Golarion, they resume their quest that was interrupted when they were displaced to the Worldscape, the titular demiplane.
• Almost every arc of Red Sonja ends with Sonja riding off to find more battles to fight.
• By the end of Reyn Seph has Aurora wipe Reyn's memory and rebuild him to make him forget everything that occurred throughout the comic. When Reyn wakes back up, he and Seph head to another village to go rescue its residents from monsters, which was exactly what Reyn was doing when the comic began.
• Robin: The final issue of Robin: Son of Batman ended with a splash panel of Damian declaring "Adventure awaits! Let's go!" as he and his friends rode off on Goliath, and a caption reading "It's never over!"
• Rocket Raccoon (1985) ends with Rocket and company leaving Halfworld in search of other planets that need their help.
• Scare Tactics ends with Arnold, Fang and Scream Queen searching for new bandmates.
• Scott Pilgrim: What's next for Scott and Ramona? Where will they go and what will they do? What does "trying again" mean to them? Will they get married, like Wallace and Stacey hinted at? The ending is unconcerned with all these questions, and lets the couple drift off into Subspace, embracing.
• Spider-Man: Bloodline ends with Ben and a newly-resurrected MJ receiving their own spider-suits, courtesy of Nick Fury.
• Squadron Supreme: New World Order ends with the original Squadron Supreme reunited once more, and ready to fight against the dictatorship.
• From 2002 to 2004, Dark Horse Comics published a trio of limited series called Star Wars Infinities, a What If? take on all three movies in the original Star Wars trilogy ^note  "What if Luke had failed to destroy the Death Star?", "What if Luke had frozen to death on Hoth before Han had rescued him?", "What if Luke and his friends had destroyed Jabba's palace in an all-out battle?", etc.. The Infinities take on Return of the Jedi notably ends like this, in a stark contrast to the actual film. Emperor Palpatine manages to escape from the Death Star before the Rebels destroy it, but Luke and Leia successfully manage to save Darth Vader's life after convincing him to turn from the Dark Side. In the last pages, Vader does a Good Costume Switch and joins the heroes as they all vow to hunt down Palpatine together.
• The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye ends with the crew of the Lost Light, having stopped Functionist Universe's invasion, found the Knights of Cybertron, and bonded as True Companions (even Megatron), decide to try recreating the quantum accident from the beginning of the comic, only this time they send one version of themselves to another universe so that both versions can exist without disappearing. Unfortunately, the version of the ship that stayed in the original universe does end up returning home.
• Ultimate Marvel
  • Spider-Men II: At the end of the story we find out that the Ultimate universe is back, and that Ultimate Spider-Man is working as a superhero once again and joined The Ultimates. Last time we see them, Spider-Man and Spider-Woman swing to the distance, heading to new adventures.
  • The mini-series Ultimate Comics New Ultimates ends with a shot of the heroes about to start a fight against The Defenders.
  Nighthawk: We took on the Ultimates, stole Thor's hammer. Man, I wish we'd get another shot at taking them down. Everydody'd be talking about us—
  *One of Hawkeye's arrows comes out of the blue and hits one of the cards the Defenders are playing poker with*
  Son of Satan: What the Hell?!?
  Iron Man: You know the old expression, kids— Be careful what you wish for!
• Watchmen ends with Nite Owl and Silk Spectre coming out of retirement to fight crime together. Then there's The Stinger, implying that they may have to deal with the fallout from Rorschach exposing Ozymandias' crimes. The trope is darkly lampshaded in dialogue.
  Ozymandias: Jon, wait. Before you leave...I did the right thing, didn't I? It all worked out in the end.
  Dr. Manhattan: "In the end?" Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends.
• The first 12-issue run of Young Avengers ends with this. Everyone on the team except new member Tommy are hanging around Avengers Mansion. Then they hear an explosion from across town, and Tommy zooms in, complete with his new costume and codename, explaining that supervillains are at the UN building. Which he just blew up fighting them, so Billy's got to magically put it back together ("You can do that, right?")
  Billy: This is not going to end well, is it?
  Teddy: No way. But I have to admit—(everyone starts running)—I can't wait to see what happens next!

Comic Strips

• The last strip of Calvin and Hobbes. "It's a magical world, Hobbes ol' buddy. Let's go exploring!"

Fan Works

• The last installment in The Beast Of Gusu series, “Going Up The Mountain” ends with Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji meeting with Baoshan Sanren, so Wei Wuxian can meet his grandmother and learn about being a wolf shifter.
• Becoming a True Invader ends with Zim back to trying to conquer Earth, and Dib trying to expose him, with the only difference being the addition of the new alien friends they made over the course of the story now living on Earth with them.
• Calvin & Hobbes: The Series ends with these very words, in place of where "THE END" would usually be.
• So far, each Communication Quest ends each Host going on to explore The Multiverse.
• Cross Cases ends with Sam, Dean, Charlie, Castiel, and Crowley making it back to their own reality. Once there, Lucifer takes Michael (Carpenter's) advice of making his own choices by removing the Mark of Cain from Dean... and then setting it free so it can wreak havoc. And the two brothers set out to save the world once again, this time with their friends right behind them.
• In Forewarned is Forearmed, the story ends with Yu's realization about the true culprit behind Adachi's murders and Marie's predicament. He and Akira then run off to confront Izanami to end the events of the fog and the Midnight Channel once and for all.
• A one-shot fic called The Green Glade turns the ending of The Black Cauldron into this. After their brief struggle with some of the deceased Horned King's men and Eilonwy's brief visit to a shared universe where she accepts the invitation of a mysterious voice to join the Disney Princesses, the heroes — now accompanied by Coll and Prince Gwydion, the last living member of Prydain's royal family that the Horned King usurped — continue returning to Caer Dallben. However, Dallben learns through Hen Wen that Arawn has somehow been freed from the Black Cauldron, and the voice warns Eilonwy that she and Taran will be at the forefront of the darker times that Arawn will threaten Prydain with.
• Lampshaded at the end of this Gunslinger Girl Jethro and Monty fancomic. And the story does continue, in a prose series called And the Adventure Continues (which of course also ends with this trope).
• Keep On Running ends midway through Jamie's first adventure with the real Clara, having just met her echoes prior. When it ends, the Twelfth and Second Doctors have just awoken a monster and yelled for them all to run.
• Among the other Sequel Hooks it has, Queen of All Oni ends with a wolf spirit of some kind escaping its imprisonment and possessing Uncle's new intern, and Jackie chasing it as it races off into the night.
• The Ruby and Nora story “Recovery” ends with the title characters leaving for Mistral to confront their enemies.
• The Sealed Kunai ends with Naruto squaring off against Kurama to determine who will be in control of Kurama's power and Naruto's body.
• The Secret Return of Alex Mack ends with a scene from many years later, showing Terawatt still going strong, having dropped her secret identity to be a full time superhero, off on another mission.
• Somnium ends with Mulan, Aurora, and Giselle leaving Agrabah to go on with their journey. Danger still follows them wherever they go, but they still feel the need to move on, even if they don't know where they'll end up.
• The Story to End All Stories implies that the heroes will continue to have adventures together.
• Surface Tension begins with Zelda and Ruto becoming a couple and then running off on another an adventure together.
• Tales of a Reset Mind ends like this, with the Emotions and Nico looking for the Core Memories after the Breach is contained.
• Vode An ends with Obi-Wan, Anakin, Ahsoka, and the 501st Legion and the 212th Attack Battalion disobeying the Jedi Council's orders and heading off to Mandalore to capture Darth Maul.
• The last chapter of What Tomorrow Brings shows that James and co are fighting the Yeerks in the Animorphs' stead.
• Zeppo In Mind ends with Xander finally being able to maintain a physical body 24/7 after months of existing only as an entity in Faith's mind. But the Mayor's Ascension is still coming up and life on the Hellmouth is always interesting.
• A Is A uses this for several universes as their entry into the multiverse. Particularly Roy Mustang and Alphonse Elric, who meet SG-1 during the Promised Day battle, and Korra, who meets them as Kuvira launches the invasion of Republic City.

Films — Animated

• The Adventures of Tintin (2011): Amid the treasure recovered by Sir Francis Haddock, Tintin discovered a scroll leading to the rest of the treasure of the Unicorn.
  Tintin: How's your thirst for adventure, Captain?
  Captain Haddock: Unquenchable, Tintin.
• All Dogs Go to Heaven: Carface arrives in heaven, having been eaten by King Gator at some point offscreen, and immediately causes trouble for himself by winding his life clock in order to get revenge. As he’s caught in the act and chased down by the whippet angel telling him that he can never come back, Charlie appears and assures the viewers that he will indeed return.
• Anastasia ends with Anastasia and Dmitri eloping. Sophie says it's a perfect ending but Marie tells her it's a perfect beginning.
• Arlo the Alligator Boy: In the end, Arlo and his gang of True Companions now reside in New York at his dad's old boardwalk which they restored and reopened, which segues into the series I ♡ Arlo, as lampshaded in the Credits Gag.
• Bands on the Run ends with the rubber bands accomplishing their goal of getting around some kids' wrists. Those kids then go on many (offscreen) trips, some of which are shown as photos.
• Barbie and the Three Musketeers: In the end, Corinne, Aramina, Renée and Viveca are called to help against a new threat against the now King.
• Big Hero 6 ends with Hiro building a new Baymax, and the team going off into the city to fight crime.
• Cars ends with Lightning McQueen moving to Radiator Springs and opening his Racing Headquarters there, restoring the town to its former beauty. Cars 3 ends with Lightning's job being saved from retirement and he becomes a teacher to Cruz Ramirez, his former trainer who's fulfilled her dream to become a racer just like him.
• Chickenhare and the Hamster of Darkness: Though Chickenhare earns the right to be accepted into the Royal Adventurer Society, he refuses, and goes along with his friends to become independent adventurers.
• Freddie as F.R.O.7 ends with Freddie and friends heading off for their next mission, which is to stop Messina from taking over Washington, D.C.
• Hoodwinked!:
  • The first film ends with Red Riding Hood, Grandma, and the Wolf being offered positions in Nicky Flippers' organization, the Happily Ever After Agency, so that their services can be used again.
  • The sequel ends with Red and the Wolf driving off to stop another catastrophe.
• The Incredibles ends with The Underminer emerging from below in a huge Drill Tank, and the titular heroes about to go after him. The immediate sequel Incredibles 2 follows up by showing what happened from that point. Also, this film ends with the Incredibles pursuing a speeding car in a brand-new Incredibile.
• The LEGO Movie: "We are fwom the pwanet Duplo, and we awe hewe to... destwoy you!" Cue Oh, Crap! and credits.
• The LEGO Batman Movie ends with Batman and friends giving the bad guys a head start before going off to catch them again.
• Millionaire Dogs ends with all kinds of animals coming to stay at the dogs' new sanctuary. JD says that they'll have a full house tonight but Bella tells him it won't be just tonight.
• The Mitchells vs. the Machines ends with the Mitchells having to receive a medal of honor from the US Congress for saving the world. As a result, they head to Washington D.C. via a new roadtrip.
• Monsters vs. Aliens ends with the monster heroes responding to an emergency in Paris. Seeing how the team has just triumphed in their first mission and Paris was where Susan wanted to go for her honeymoon before her jerk of a fiance talked her out of it for his career, going on this new mission is definitely a happy ending for them.
• The Painting: Lola's story ends on this note. Compared to everyone else in the titular painting who find contentment in being completed at last or repainting themselves, she meets the actual painter and converses with him about art. The film ends with her walking off to the great unknown, as she's decided to explore the world to further understand the nature of life.
• The Rescuers ends with the arrival of another call for help (possibly from Australia), and Bianca (again) volunteering herself and a reluctant Bernard. The sequel ends with Bernard and Bianca getting engaged and presumably going off to continue their rescue work.
• The Road to El Dorado: After sealing off the entrance to El Dorado so Cortez can't get to it, Miguel, Tulio and Chel ride off into the sunset in search of their next adventure.
• Stitch! The Movie: In Lilo & Stitch: The Series. The film ends with Lilo and Stitch taking Nani's buggy (which would become the "X-Buggy" in the show) to begin their experiment hunting.
• The Steam Engines of Oz ends with Victoria, Phadrig and Gromit setting sail in a Cool Airship to search for Phadrig's sons.
• Toy Story 3 ends with college age Andy giving his old toys to young Bonnie, with the implication that they'll have their own adventures.
• Turning Red: The movie ends with Mei, having fully embraced her panda form and repaired her relationship with Ming, going off to hang with Miriam, Priya, Abby, and Tyler again. This shows that while the movie may be over, Mei and her friends will continue to hang out and have more adventures together in the future.
• Wonder Woman (2009) ends with Diana changing into her costume to fight the Cheetah.
• Zootopia ends with Nick joining the ZPD and becoming Judy's police partner. A bit of a downplayed example in that their first assignment as partners (tracking down an illegal street racer) is not nearly as action-packed as what they'd done in the main plot, but it still implies that the two will continue to have exciting adventures together for the foreseeable future.

Films — Live-Action

• 1994 Baker Street: Sherlock Holmes Returns ends with Holmes describing a young blonde women he deduces is a prostitute who is going to be his next client. Winslow corrects him by saying that the outfit he described is the uniform of a 49ers cheerleader.
• 22 Jump Street ends with a montage of Schmidt and Jenko being sent on more infiltrations to schools that grow increasingly bizarre and ridiculous (ranging from med school and art school to "2121: Jump Street in Space"), going through every single Sequelitis trope as the Jump Street series becomes a Franchise Zombie.
• Spoofed in Almost Heroes when the characters finally reach the Pacific coast but propose to keep going to find the land route to Asia.
• The Amazing Spider-Man 2 ends with Peter donning the costume again and battling Rhino.
• AmeriGeddon: On defeating the UN troops attacking them, the heroes acknowledge that the war to free the US has just begun. The film ends after this.
• Backdraft: The firefighting crew are seen to be taking another call just before the credits roll.
• Back to the Future ends this way. The Bobs tell us that the ending was meant as a joke, with no sequel ever planned. But the film unexpectedly became a hit. The popularity guaranteed that a sequel would be created — if not by them, by someone else employed by Universal. So they followed up with Back to the Future Part II and Back to the Future Part III, which were produced back-to-back, completing a trilogy with a definite ending.
• Bedknobs and Broomsticks ends with Paul pulling out the eponymous enchanted bedknob, and suggesting to Charlie and Carrie that they continue using it to visit different places.
• Biggles: Adventures in Time ends with Ferguson suddenly snatched from his wedding by Time-lightning into a new adventure with Biggles and chums which seems set to start with an escape from a lost subterranean tribe...
  Biggles: For God's sake, get us out of here before they figure out you're not a god, you're just an American...
• Towards the end of Black Hawk Down, the last we see of Hoot is him grabbing a bite to eat, grabbing his gear, and heading back out into the city to search for the pilot who was taken prisoner earlier in the film. He even casually remarks that it's Monday, the start of a whole new week.
• The Blade Trilogy movies tended to end in this manner. Like in the first one, after the defeat of Big Bad, Blade is offered a cure for vampirism. "There's still job to be done. You want to help? Make me a better serum." The original planned ending for the third one was going to be this as well. The idea was that they had wiped out the vampires...and now were going to deal with werewolves instead.
• Bullshot ends with a photo montage of the Comedic Hero marrying the Damsel in Distress while the Narrator fills in the audience that this wasn't the last of Bullshot's adventures. "But that is another tale" he concludes over the final photo, which shows the Not Quite Dead Big Bad is disguised as their wedding chauffeur.
• Captive State: The film ends with Mulligan revealed to be a mole in the collaborationist government and launching a suicide attack on the aliens, while Gabriel is implied to aid the Resistance. It's also shown that the Resistance extends across the US (and likely the world), with a montage of attacks and protests seen.
• Casablanca ends with Rick and Captain Renault going off to join up with the Free French in Brazzaville to continue to help the fight against the Nazis.
• The Circus ends with The Tramp not getting the girl and leaving the circus.
• Come and See ends with Flyora and other young boys marching out with the partisans. The horror that he and those boys have gone through is just the beginning.
• Conan the Barbarian (1982): "And this story shall also be told..." The sequel completely ignored the planned story arc, though.
• Conan the Destroyer: At the end, Conan's allies choose to stay with Jehnna as members of her court, but Conan himself turns down her offer to rule by her side, saying he will find his own kingdom. The final scene of the film ends with him sitting in a darkened room:

  Narrator: So it was that Conan mourned his lost Valeria. At length, he sought adventure in distant lands and trod the jeweled thrones of the earth beneath his sandaled feet, until at last he found his own Kingdom and wore his crown upon a troubled brow.

  Caption (With Dramatic Music): But That Is Another Story...

• The Con is On ends with Harry and Peter on a plane flying to Brazil, wondering what they're going to do for money. Harry spots a woman a few rows back wearing a valuable necklace and starts plotting a whole new con.
• Cooties ends with the outbreak still in full swing, and the group headed off to somewhere "where kids won't go". Doug seems to believe that, should they travel to the source of the infection, there's a good chance he'd be able to develop a cure to the virus, so it's at least somewhat hopeful.
• Dance of the Dead sees Jimmy, Lindsey, Jules, George, Jensen, Dave and Coach Keel surviving a prom full of zombies, rescuing the surviving students and blowing up the school. Jensen then suggests making sure that the power plant responsible for the outbreak is shut down, to which Keel responds by recruiting all the students for the task...but not before treating them to pancakes while they discuss battle tactics.
• The Dark Knight Rises seemingly ended with Bruce Wayne dying, until Alfred spotted him in Italy with Selina Kyle. The final shot has Robin Blake standing in the batcave, implying that the Dark Knight will return.
• The Dawn Patrol, if aerial combat against the Germans in World War I can be considered an adventure. The last scene ends with Scott, having succeeded to command of the squad after his buddy Courtney is shot down and killed, giving another morning briefing. The trope is emphasized by the sudden Fade to Black right in the middle of Courtney's speech.
• DC Extended Universe:
  • Justice League ends like this. Bruce Wayne and Diana start planning to convert the derelict Wayne Manor in a new headquarters for the League, with "room for more" members, and Clark, now Back from the Dead, resumes being the Man of Steel, the final shot of the film being him doing the iconic shirt rip, before flying off the save the day.
  • Zack Snyder's Justice League also ends with the "Room for More" scene, with the addition of the Martian Manhunter joining the League because of the incoming threat of Darkseid. Superman rips his shirt with the black suit underneath, but doesn't take off. Aquaman meanwhile pulls a Refusal of the Call to Mera and Vulko, preferring to return to his father.
  • Wonder Woman: The film ends with Wonder Woman getting ready to continue her mission. Fittingly, Wonder Woman herself named the trope in Justice League Unlimited.
• A villainous example in Den of Thieves. The movie ends with Donnie and his real crew in London, laying the ground work for a new heist at a diamond exchange.
• Dick Tracy ends with the protagonist finally proposing to Tess, but still having to run off to handle a bank robbery in progress, showing that his job is likely never done.
• Dick Tracy, Detective ends with Tracy and Tess about to go out for their long-delayed dinner. As they are about to leave, Pat dashes in and tells Tracy a taxi driver has just been murdered. As Tracy and Pat rush out to investigate, Tess mutters "Here We Go Again!".
• At the end of the 1975 Doc Savage adaptation Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze, our hero returns to his office to find an alarming message left on his answering machine by one of the Fabulous Five, causing him to race off in his car. We're then told that Doc will return in Doc Savage: The Arch Enemy of Evil. Due to the mediocre response to the movie by both critics and audience, he didn't.
• Explorers: The aliens send Ben, Wolfgang, and Darren a new dream... and Lori has joined them. Ben asks, "If this is all a dream, what happens when we wake up?" Darren answers, "I don't know, but I can't wait to find out."
• Fast Color: At the end, Ruth and Lila escape in their truck, on the way to Rome where they'll connect with other hidden women who have superpowers.
• Final Girl: Veronica kills the four murderous boys, then William picks her up (apparently having been monitoring the action with a sniper rifle, and he could have intervened at any time) to congratulate her on finishing her training before they head off to find more slashers to kill.
• The Final Sacrifice: Hinted at by Zap driving into the sunset in his beat-up pick up truck.
• Future World (2018): The film ends with Ash riding off alongside Lei after saying she wants to find other androids, with a detour to take down Big Daddy Love Lord.
• "And now, back again after 18 years: The New Adventures of Galaxy Quest!" With a brand new Plucky Comic Relief!
• Gleahan and the Knaves of Industry: Mark and Gleahan reflect on the adventure they just went through. They then get up from the park bench and walk off together.
  Mark: So! Next adventure?
  Gleahan: Next adventure it is!
• Good Will Hunting ends with Will heading to California to reunite with Skylar.
• At the end of Graduation, Jackson is shown pursuing his new career in bank robbery after the other three go off to college.
• At the end of Grand Hotel, the five people who had checked into hotel at the start of the movie are leaving—one to the morgue, one to prison, and the other three to various bittersweet fates. But a young married couple is arriving to check in, symbolizing that new adventures and new stories will happen at the Grand Hotel.
• A Haunting in Venice ends with with Poirot accepting the case of the young man who had been begging his assistance at the start of the movie, and immediately expounding a theory about how the man's family doctor has been surreptitiously murdering the members of the family.
• The ending of The Hurt Locker, though an odd variant. Sergeant James walks back into Iraq for the beginning of another year-long rotation, not just because he's Married to the Job, but because it's the only thing he knows how to do anymore.
• Ilya Muromets ends with the Tugars defeated, Ilya giving Little Falcon Svyatogor's sword and riding off in search of more adventure.
• Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny may be the Grand Finale of the Indiana Jones franchise, but the good Dr. Jones isn't one to be kept down, as the final shot of the movie is of him retrieving his trademark hat from a clothesline as the iconic "Raiders March" theme swells one last time.
• Innerspace ends with Jack chasing Tuck and Lydia's limo down a highway after recognizing their limo driver as the Cowboy.
• In the end of Interstellar, Cooper, at Murph's insistence, sets out on a new voyage through the wormhole, alongside TARS, in order to find Amelia on the new planet.
• John Carpenter's Vampires and Ghosts of Mars, two films by John Carpenter that came out within a few years of each other, end the same way. The Big Bad has been vanquished, the day has been saved, but the lesser threats still have to be cleaned up. Both end with the hero and their sidekick heading out to kick some more ass.
• The Last Airbender closes out the same way it's animated adaption first season did. Aang single-handily stops the Fire Nation from destroying the Northern Water Tribe and Ozai charging Azula with going after the Avatar. Unlike the cartoon however, the film gained too much of a negative reaction that will make it unlikely it'll have any sequels.
• The Last Witch Hunter ends with Kaulder and Chloe setting off to watch out for rogue witches, this time without Axe and Cross' aid.
• The Legend of Frenchie King ends with Louise and her sisters going back to being wandering outlaws after the ranch they were looking to settle in for a while gets destroyed, but they get five new additions to the gang.
• Little Shop of Horrors: The final scene where the newlyweds go to their pastel cottage and garden of paradise, ends with a juvenile plant in the garden giving a new Cheshire Cat Grin.
• The Lone Ranger treats this trope as a Bittersweet Ending. John Reid continues to be the Lone Ranger because he no longer trusts the law he had once served. He leaves behind Rebecca and Daniel, out of respect for his late brother Dan.
• Long John Silver: Long John returns to Portobello as a rich citizen and dines with the Governor, during which it is implied that Silver received a pardon for his past crimes for the role he played in saving his daughter's life, and for a "generous donation to Government House" that served to "arm the harbor against pirates". He and Jim ride off before Purity Pinker can pull a Shotgun Wedding.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • In the end of Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), the newly christened Guardians set off into space to do not "something good" or "something bad", but "a bit of both", while "I Want You Back" by the Jackson 5 plays in the background. The screen then cuts to "The Guardians of the Galaxy will return".
  • Avengers: Endgame: Captain America passes the torch to Sam Wilson and Thor joins the Guardians of the Galaxy to explore the universe.
  • Spider-Man: No Way Home: Peter dons a new suit and resumes his vigilantism.
  • In the mid-credits scene of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Clea (we're not actually introduced to her) appears and recruits Strange to go and prevent another incursion.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3: After most of the old Guardians go their separate ways, Rocket and Groot lead a new team on new adventures.
• The Mask of Zorro. Diego, before he passes away, promises Alejandro that there will be other battles for him to fight now that he is Zorro.
• The Master and Commander movie, The Far Side of the World ends with Jack Aubrey realizing that the captain of the Acheron (the ship he just captured and sent away with part of his crew) is actually alive and still aboard the ship disguised as a doctor. He immediately cancels his plans to relax on the Galapagos and sails off in pursuit as the credits begin to roll.
• Men in Black ends with Agents J and the newly-inducted L going on a new assignment.
• Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears ends with Phryne receiving a telegram telling her that the Maharajah has been murdered, and immediately setting off to investigate, with Jack still on the back of her camel.
• Mission: Impossible (1996) ends with Ethan Hunt being offered another assignment like Jim Phelps was at the beginning.
• Momentum: At the end, Alex learns that on the flash drive are incriminating details of a false flag operation the Senator's plotting, and she vows to expose this despite threats by his minions to stop her at all costs.
• The Monkey Goes West: The 4-part series of movies based on Journey to the West ends its fourth and final movie with the characters, Xuan-zhang the monk, Sun Wukong and their comrades continuing their journey to India.
• Mortal Kombat: The Movie: At the end of the film, while Johnny Cage, Sonya Blade, Kitana, Liu Kang and Raiden are celebrating their victory over Shang Tsung, Outworld emperor Shao Kahn appears in the sky to get them ready for another adventure.
• Mosul (2020): After making a long journey through ISIS-occupied Iraq while taking casualties, the Nineveh Province SWAT team finally reaches their objective and take a breather. The Reveal happens for Kawa, then he finally understands why they fight and afterwards offers to lead and continue on towards their next objective, to which the movie ends and the credits roll.
• The first National Treasure film originally ended like this, but it was cut after test audiences mistook it for a Sequel Hook. Then it got a sequel anyway.
• Pirates of the Caribbean:
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End ends with many of the loose ends tied up, but Barbossa once again steals the Black Pearl from Jack Sparrow. Sparrow, meanwhile, appears to know just where Barbossa is headed next, and seems to be looking forward to the adventure of getting his ship back again.
  • The fourth movie ended similarly, with Barbossa in command of a different ship of his own now, while Jack has to work to restore the Black Pearl (which Barbossa "wrecked")…along with a whole fleet of powerful pirate ships.
• By the end of Prometheus, the crew of the titular spaceship has foiled the Engineers' plot to destroy all life on Earth, but Shaw (the sole survivor) still has no idea why they wanted to wipe out the species that they helped create in the first place. So in the movie's final scene, she boards a spare Engineer spacecraft, and with David the android as her guide, plots a course for the Engineers' home planet...
• During the end credits of Rambo: Last Blood, Rambo gets up from his porch and rides off into the sunset on a horse.
• Safety Not Guaranteed ends with Kenneth and Darius actually going somewhere...
• Serenity (2005) ends with another part of the ship falling off. The crew will have to take another job to fix it.
• Sherman's March: The Road Trip Plot features documentarian Ross McElwee on a road trip through Georgia and the Carolinas, looking for love, meeting various women and consistently striking out with them. Back up in Boston after his tour of Sherman's march and his encounters with uninterested women, McElwee gets a teaching job and starts auditing a music class. Two minutes before the end of the film, he notes that his music teacher is very attractive. He says that he asked her if she'd like to go see a movie—and the credits roll.
• Skyfall ends with MI16 moving into the Universal Exports office from the old movies, but with a new team except for Bond. "Ready to get back to work?" "With pleasure, M. With pleasure." Cue Bond Gun Barrel.
• The Specials ends with the team, having patched their differences and renewed their sense of purpose, getting a call from the president. Giant ants are attacking the Pentagon and none of the A-list teams are available, leaving them to jet off and save the day.
• Spider-Man 2 ends with Peter and Mary-Jane finally getting together only for Peter to run off again after hearing police sirens. Mary-Jane is left behind as the reality of being in a relationship with a superhero sinks in.
• Starship Troopers: The movie ends with Johnny Rico in charge of the Roughnecks and a Federation propaganda spot, enticing civilians to enlist for the war effort.
• From the Star Trek movies:
  • Star Trek: The Motion Picture: The Human Adventure is Just Beginning.
  • Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan ends with the Opening Narration as spoken by Leonard Nimoy
  • Star Trek III: The Search for Spock ends with exactly this phrase as the end caption; it is effectively the Trope Namer, and possible inspiration for the Justice League Unlimited quote.
  • Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home ends with the crew taking the new ship out for a spin
  • Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country: while the Enterprise is being decommissioned, the adventure most assuredly continues:
    Kirk: Captain's log, stardate 9529.1. This is the final cruise of the starship Enterprise under my command. This ship and her history will shortly become the care of another crew. To them and their posterity will we commit our future. They will continue the voyages we have begun and journey to all the undiscovered countries, boldly going where no man, where no one, has gone before.
  • Star Trek: Generations ends with Picard telling Riker he believes there will be more ships named Enterprise.
  • The deleted final scene of Star Trek: Nemesis ends with the Enterprise repaired, and Captain Picard ordering that it be taken out once more to a system "where no one has been before."
  • Star Trek (2009) ends with the Enterprise and its brand new Captain, James T. Kirk, leaving Earth after having stopped the Big Bad, to the classic Opening Narration spoken by Leonard Nimoy as Spock Prime.
  • Star Trek Into Darkness: Or rather, the adventure begins, with the film ending as the Enterprise leaves Earth to begin its five-year deep space exploration mission, which was the basis for the original series.
  • Star Trek Beyond ends with our heroes setting off in the newly-constructed Enterprise-A.
• The Steel Helmet ends with the surviving characters marching off with a new platoon, then has "THIS STORY HAS NO ENDING" appear on the screen.
• A Study in Terror ends with a mysterious hat arriving in the mail and Holmes launching into a series of deductions about it, while Watson stands by with a 'here we go again' expression on his face as the credits roll.
• Super Mario Bros. (1993) ends with Koopa defeated, the barrier between the worlds restored, and Daisy running the kingdom. But one day, while the Mario Bros. are relaxing...
  Daisy: (Bursts in, dressed for war) You're not going to believe this!
  Mario: I believe it.
  Luigi: You believe it?!
  Mario: (Grins) I believe.
• The end of S.W.A.T. (2003) has the team heading off on another mission, despite their shift having technically ended several hours ago.
  Hondo: Yeah. What the hell. Mount up!
• They Cloned Tyrone ends with Fontaine, Slick Charles and Yo-Yo deciding to travel the country taking down the conspiracy's other operations in major cities, starting in Memphis, Tennessee.
• The Thief of Bagdad (1940) ends with Abu flying off on the magic carpet in search of fun and adventure.
• Tragedy Girls ends with a fittingly twisted version, in which Sadie and McKayla drive off into the sunset, having completed their killing spree and gotten away with it. It's all but stated that they'll start the cycle over wherever they end up.
• True Lies ends with the Taskers working together on a new mission.
• Turkey Shoot: The film ends without clear resolution of the plot, only the promise that revolution is led by people like those depicted, according to H. G. Wells (who provides the ending quote) as the now-armed prisoners leave the area.
• Wedding Crashers ends with the two couples deciding to crash weddings together.
• Wendy: At the end, Wendy's own daughter goes off with Peter to visit the island herself.
• After the credits of the Yatterman movie, a fake "next episode" trailer plays, featuring the Big Bad's brother seeking revenge, Dorombo Gang building a 2.0 version of the mecha used in the final battle, Doronjo in a white version of her usual costume (referred as a "wedding version") and the Yatterpelican.

Literature

• The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi: The story reunites Amina with her pirate comrades after ten years apart for One Last Job on the high seas. At the end, they're preparing to set sail again, this time for the joy of exploration... and because Amina's bargain with the Peri will require her to hunt down four magical artifacts sometime soon.
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn:
  But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before.
• The Animorphs series ends this way... so much so that the final book is titled The Beginning.
• The Black Tattoo: At the end of the book, Jack and friends return home. Jack is somehow once again able to eat human food, but after having nearly sacrificed himself in order to convince an almighty Physical God to not cause Armageddon, and inadvertently convincing said Physical God to spare him in the process, Jack finds himself exasperated by the monotony of being an Ordinary High-School Student again. Then his friends from the Brotherhood arrive to say that creatures from Hell are causing some problems, and that they think he'd be the best person to help out.
• The Charlie and the Chocolate Factory sequel Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator ends with Willy Wonka and the Bucket family getting an invitation to the White House for saving most of a space hotel's crew from carnivorous aliens, and Charlie acknowledging that even after all that's happened between the two books, their adventures aren't done yet. (Roald Dahl did make an abortive attempt at a third novel that would have picked up on this ending.) Perhaps as a tribute to both books' endings having this trope's feel, the Not His Sled ending of the 2013 stage musical adaptation of Chocolate Factory applies this trope to Willy Wonka, who hands ownership of the factory over to Charlie and his family immediately — and reveals to the audience that he's retiring from running it because there's still so much he wants to create.
• The Chronicles of Narnia ends with everyone living in Aslan's perfect kingdom and evil being gone forever. But now the real adventure begins, each chapter more exciting than the last, and never ending. The final instrumental track of the first Narnia film is titled "Only the Beginning of the Adventure".
• Codex Alera ends with Tavi being crowned the New First Lord and marrying his love interest Kitai. He is initially weary, since rebuilding Alera isn't going to be as exciting as the war against the Vord, but then Varg points out that the Vord are still strong in Canim lands across the sea, and he's going to have a lot of work to do to make sure Alera is prepared for a second invasion.
• Some books in the Discworld series end like this.
  • This often happens to Rincewind: while everyone else in the book gets an ending, Rincewind is flung towards a new adventure.
  • The Truth ends with a traffic accident that the Ankh-Morpork Times of course has to cover.
  • Monstrous Regiment ends with Polly Perks heading off to deal with the threat of a second war with Zlobenia, this time taking advantage of her connections with the Ankh-Morpork Times and Lieutenant (now Captain) Blouse, her status as a sergeant in the Borogravian army, and a list of higher-ranking officers who are secretly women in disguise provided by Sergeant Jackrum.
  • At the end of The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, while Keith and the rats have settled down in Bad Blintz, Maurice goes off to find another stupid-looking kid and help him earn his fortune.
• Doctor Who Expanded Universe: The final book in the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel series ends with both the Story Arc and the storyline of the book itself unresolved (but with a resolution in place, once they have the chance to use it), and the Doctor and his companions leaping into danger.
• Doctrine of Labyrinths: The end of Corambis. The author has said she wanted to make it clear that the story didn't end with the narrative, and she definitely did.
• Dragonvarld: The trilogy does not wrap up every plot thread, with it being implied that the characters will be engaged in dealing with them later. In Dragonkeep, the common people are rebelling, though the army is returning and likely could crush them without outside intervention. The dragon civil war is still ongoing. Ven and all his half-dragon siblings must find an accepting land to settle.
• Eaters of the Dead ends mid sentence, with "Now it happened that", as Ahmad ibn Fadlan is returning from his adventures in the north.
• The Girl from the Miracles District ends with Nikita setting off to investigate her family history, and Robin resolving to uncover his true identity.
• More than one book in the Hank the Cowdog series has ended with this tone, implying that the work as Head of Ranch Security never ends.
  Hank: Case closed, and back to work!
• The Harry Potter series ends this way as well. According to Word of God, Harry and Ron do become Aurors after the war (Harry rising to Head of the Auror Office at 27), which means they spend the rest of their lives doing the very same thing they've been doing for the last 7 years: stopping Dark wizards. Add the fact that Dark Lords seem to crop up quite frequently, the last two being active within 30 years of each other, and that wizards live long lives, and the adventure really has just started. And, the next generation being sent off to school. If they're anything like their parents, there will be plenty of hijinks going on at Hogwarts.
• The Heroes of Olympus: Leo, thought dead by all of his friends, retrieves Calypso from Ogygia, and together they fly off on Festus, neither knowing nor caring where they were headed.
• Hightown: The series ended without wrapping everything up. Ray's become completely corrupt, having gotten into bed with Osito and murdered Frankie. It's unclear whether many other dirty cops who Jackie learned about will be prosecuted too. At least she seems happy and content with her life, recovering from alcoholism once again.
• Sidney Sheldon's If Tomorrow Comes ends with Classy Cat-Burglar Tracy on a flight to Brazil to marry her partner-in-crime Jeff; having pulled off one last big score they intend to go straight. It turns out that her seat mate on the flight is the uber-rich, uber-juicy target Maximilian Pierpont, whom Jeff always wanted to go after, and the lecher wants to get acquainted with her...
• The Inheritance Cycle ends like this, with Eragon leaving Alagaesia for good to raise the dragons, leaving Nasuada and Arya the Queens of their respective people, Roran as the new ruler of Palancar Valley, and Murtagh as the The Drifter. It's implied that, because all the Dragon Riders are almost immortal, most of the magical cast will see each other again, leaving the story open for both C.P. and fanfiction writers to return to if they wish. Really, it just leaves open more questions then it actually answers.
• Liaden Universe:
  • The five-book main series ends like this, with a new character running up to Our Heroes on the second-to-last page of the book to explain that she is in really bad trouble. The book ends on the line:
    She nodded. "It's kind of complicated," she started . . .
  • Several years later, two side-story novels were written to explain the nature of the "complicated" problem, followed by Ghost Ship which picked up where the last book left off.
• While most of the main plot threads in The Licanius Trilogy are neatly wrapped up, it deliberately hints that Davian, Wirr and Asha's stories are far from over. Davian will finally meet his mother, Wirr must reconstruct Andarra as its new king, and Asha must negotiate with the Lyth to prevent them from reclaiming their power from her.
• After the climactic showdown of Geoph Essex's Lovely Assistant, the adventure definitely continues, with the primary protagonist even riding away on her horse (though not into the sunset, since it's night time). Then the last chapter gives us a Distant Finale, which means no more adventures for Calvin (perhaps), but presumably still plenty left for Jenny.
• Implied at the very end of The Man Who Brought the Dodgers Back to Brooklyn. After losing the World Series, and after he and Bobby Hanes have married their respective love interests, "Squat" Malone notices an airplane flying around above the new Ebbets Field, skywriting the phrase "Wait Till Next Year!"
• Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn sets this trope up by having the Sitha woman Aditu recite a prophecy over The Wise Prince Josua's twin children. As the characters openly wonder what it means, they discuss the fact that history isn't going to end with their current woes, and there will be more great deeds and adventures to come once the Storm King is defeated.
• In Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, Jacob and Emma defeat the Wight and manage to save Miss Peregrine, but not Miss Avocet. They then discover that the home has been destroyed by a German bomb, disabling their Time Loop and forcing Miss Peregrine and the peculiar children to not live the same day over and over again. Concurrently, Horace discovers that Wights have taken Miss Avocet to an unknown location that could easily be in an alternate loop in any continent at any time. The book ends with everyone rowing out to sea.
• Agatha Christie's stories about The Mysterious Mr. Quin usually end with Mr. Quin quietly departing without saying goodbye, but "The Harlequin Tea Set", which she wrote knowing it would be the last of the series, deliberately ends with him making an effort to assure Sattherthwaite that they'll be meeting again.
• In Michael Ende's original novel The Neverending Story, many secondary plot threads are left hanging with the phrase "But that's another story, and will be told another time," thus implying that... uh... the adventure continues.
• The end of Neverwhere has the Marquis de Carabas answer Richard's call and lead him through a mysteriously-appearing door back into London Below, presumably for further adventures.
• The Orphan's Tales ends with Aerie, Lantern, Solace, Scald, and Sleeve showing up to embrace Sorrow as her family. The prince is sad, as he thinks his role in the story is over... until Sorrow reaches out to him, asking him to join her on her future adventures, and he follows her with great enthusiasm.
• The first series of Percy Jackson and the Olympians ends this way with not only another prophecy, but with Annabeth and Percy running down the camp hill and not looking back leaving a very ambiguous feel to what is yet to come.
• In The Rolling Stones (1952), after travelling to Mars, and eventually the Asteroid Belt, the Stone family shrug and keep on Rolling.
• In The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School, a group of Boarding School students form a secret society to rescue one of their number after she's kidnapped. The novel ends with them discovering a new mystery to solve.
• Sam the Cat: Detective: The series ends with San receiving a job offer to find a stolen necklace.
• Each of The Ship Who... books is self-contained. The Ship Who Sang ends with Helva taking a new brawn who she's delighted with and looking forwards to their time together, [PartnerShip] has Nancia with her two spy brawns joyfully leaping into hyperspace on a new assignment, The Ship Who Searched has Tia and Alex assigned to help archaeologists discover a Precursor homeworld (and in the meantime exploring Tia's new Remote Body).
• Andre Norton's Star Gate ends with the heroes having built another Cool Gate to find yet another Alternate Universe, and the very last words are:
  Sometimes he thought that an endless quest had been set them for some purpose, and that the seeking, not the finding, was their full reward. And it was good.
• Solomon Kane: The last work in the series, Solomon Kane's Homecoming, ends with Solomon realizing that he is a Stranger in a Familiar Land, and leaving his hometown for another adventure. The result is an absolute Tear Jerker.
• Starship Troopers: The book ends with newly commissioned Lieutenant Johnny Rico in charge of the Roughnecks, still assigned to the Rodger Young, and reunited with his father, who ended up a sergeant in the unit with him.
• Star Wars Legends: The Wraith Squadron novel Mercy Kill — the first book published in the X-Wing Series in over a decade — concerned the Wraiths Putting the Band Back Together after being officially decommissioned due to office politics. After the crisis du jour is dealt with, the Wraiths get together and reminisce on events, coming to the conclusion that is was a good last hurrah for the Wraiths. Team Leader, and recently appointed Minister of Intelligence, Face Loran cuts in, saying that since they remain anonymous and not directly connected to the government, it doesn't have to be their last hurrah...
• Stray ambiguously ends on this type of ending. Pufftail tells his young grandson Kitcher that, now that he's seen his daughter Tabitha have kittens of her own and seen said kittens grow as well, he'll set off on the road again. However, Tabitha doesn't believe that her father will go away.
• Sundered Lands ends with Trundle and Esmeralda fixing the world and making it whole again, and Trundle eagerly declaring that he doesn't want to go back home and is ready for another adventure with his friend.
• The Sword of Truth grays the difference between this and a Sequel Hook. The main arc does wrap up, but there remains both some very specific things left to be done and some adventures to be had. Since each book is designed to be somewhat stand-alone, the entire series has this feel. In more than half of the books they end up cleaning up their mistakes from previous books, so it's somewhat justified, bizarrely.
• Tailchaser's Song ends with Fritti Tailchaser escaping the island where he had temporarily lived as a pet with Hushpad and happily running down the hills. It's mentioned that he wants to see Pouncequick and Roofshadow again, as well as go back to his clan and tell them about his adventure, but it's unknown what he'll do first.
• Talion: Revenant: At the end once he's defeated the villains and thrwarted the Hamisian plot, Nolan rides away with Morai to have another adventure.
• The Temeraire series ends with the war ending and Napoleon being banished. Dragon Captain Laurence assumes this is the end of his adventuring days and decides to quietly retire, but Temeraire realizes that with the new dragon seats in Parliament, he'll be needed to fight for equal rights. Laurence realizes that while his role in it all might be done, Temeraire's is not, and that Laurence's new duty is to continue on at Temeraire's side.
• Tunnel in the Sky ends with Rod leading settlers to a new colony world.
• Who P-P-P-Plugged Roger Rabbit ends with Roger bursting into Eddie's office with a new crime for him to solve, adding that he suspects Jessica of dating Cary Grant.
• The ending of Zahrah the Windseeker hints that Zahrah's adventuring days have only just begun since she will develop an overwhelming urge to go Walking the Earth.

Live-Action TV

• The 10th Kingdom: After Virginia and Wolf make it back to New York City from the Nine Kingdoms, Virginia mentions in passing that while she and Wolf were "happily ever after" for a while, their lives were interrupted by another crisis in the kingdoms, ending the story that the adventure was just "The First Book of the The 10th Kingdom".
• 24, season 3 ends with Jack Bauer shedding a few tears for everything that has happened in the last 24 hours before being called to an assignment again.
• American Horror Story: Murder House ends with Constance Langdon in the process of raising the Harmons' three year-old son—who is heavily implied to be the Antichrist.
• In Angel, the final episode ends just as the heroes are just going into the start of the apocalypse battle — message being that "you never stop fighting." There are probably some other reasons for the ambiguous ending, as the show was suddenly canceled by the WB. And the series was picked back up in comic book form, anyway.
• Ash vs. Evil Dead: Ash defeats the demon Kandar the Destroyer, only to be rendered comatose. Awakening in a post-apocalyptic future, he ends the series riding off to keep fighting the evil.
• The last episode of The A-Team ended with this discussion:
  Hannibal: Chasing thugs through the park... it's got a nice ring to it, doesn't it?
  Face: It has a terrible ring to it.
  Murdock: Just think, if we get a pardon, we may never have to eat a knuckle sandwich again.
  B.A.: I wouldn't bet on it, Crazy Man. Looks like Hannibal's on the jazz again.
  Face: What, what, wha-
  Murdock: No, you—you tell me right now, you tell me right to my face, you tell me that you don't have a plan.
  Hannibal: Well I—I was thinking, what are we gonna do when this thing's over? I mean, what are we really qualified to do?
  Face: Go after... thugs in the park?
  Hannibal: And... outlaw motorcycle gangs, organized crime figures... why, there's a world of slimeballs out there.
  Murdock: I knew it. I just knew you had a plan.
  Hannibal: Comforting, isn't it?
  B.A.: I'll get the van.
• The Avengers (1960s) ends with Steed and Tara accidentally launched in a rocket, and Mother saying to the camera that they'll be back.
• Bones ended with the last villain dead, the characters all okay, and the first prep for rebuilding the blown up lab. It was rather obvious the adventures would continue and it fit with the overall theme the ending had of “things happen, life goes on”
• Burn Notice ends with Jesse and Sam heading off to Carlito's to meet someone else who needs help.
• Chousei Kantai Sazer X ends with Sazer-X, the Three Shoguns and Yui are all made the new guardians of the Cosmo Capsules and being brought to a different place with them. The Three Shoguns return to space, Gordo and Patora open up a university together, Kane returns to his home planet to reunite with his family with Ein and Zwein tagging along with him, Ad goes to his home planet to reform his people's warrior culture, Remy stays on Earth to build a life for herself there and Takuto leaves for England to work as an F1 engineer alongside his father.
• A rare instance of this trope ending a single episode—in Chuck, one story ended with the title character getting ready to enjoy a short vacation from spy work while his partners/handlers were called away called on another mission. Chuck decides to forego the vacation and come along.
• The 2014 revival of Cosmos ends on this note. It uses the discoveries of dark energy and dark matter to highlight that humanity is at the beginning, not the end, of our scientific journey and emphasizes the importance of scientific literacy. The episode closes on a shot of the unmanned Ship of the Imagination, inviting the viewer to explore the cosmos.
• The Defenders (2017): So far, all of Marvel's Netflix shows have ended in this manner due to the restructuring of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The obvious intention is to leave the characters in a place where their stories can be picked up again in the future if the producers so desire, while still tying up most loose ends in their currents plots. Details below:
  • Daredevil (2015): With Kingpin Out-Gambitted by Matt and in jail for life, Matt restarts his law firm as a three-way partnership with Foggy and Karen (as a private investigator). Meanwhile, Ben Poindexter takes the final steps toward becoming Daredevil's archenemy Bullseye.
  • Luke Cage (2016): Per Black Mariah's will, Luke becomes the new owner of Harlem's Paradise and de facto ruler of Harlem's underworld. He accepts not because he wants to become a criminal mastermind, but to prevent a violent gang war from the resulting Evil Power Vacuum. He reopens the club while former allies Claire, DW, Misty, and Tilda look on, waiting for his next move.
  • The Punisher (2017): The final episode of season 2 shows Frank fully embracing his Punisher persona, unleashing wanton street justice on some gang members.
  • Iron Fist (2017): After a six-month Time Skip, Danny is now a globetrotting hero and something of a Mage Marksman, while Colleen has stayed in New York as the new Iron Fist, complete with a starter pack of rogues consisting of Mrs. Yang, Typhoid Mary, and possibly Luke Cage.
  • Jessica Jones (2015): Jessica ties up all loose ends in New York City and is ready to board a train to El Paso and make her way to Mexico for a new life, when she has a last-minute change of heart and decides to continue her work in New York.
• Desperate Housewives ends with the main characters eventually leaving Wisteria Lane, but the ending narration notes that as new neighbors move into the neighborhood, there will still be dark secrets to hide and protect.
• Doctor Who:
  • "Survival", the last story of the original 1963-89 run of the show, ends with the Doctor and Ace, having defeated the Master seemingly for good, happily wandering back to the TARDIS to continue adventuring, with an accompanying voiceover by the Doctor: "There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, and the sea's asleep, and the rivers dream; people made of smoke and cities made of song. Somewhere there's danger, somewhere there's injustice, somewhere else the tea's getting cold. Come on, Ace. We've got work to do." The voiceover was added once it became clear that the show was facing a lengthy hiatus at the very least.
  • The TV Movie ends much the same way, with the Doctor leaving to continue adventuring after seemingly defeating the Master for good yet again, but not before encountering another TARDIS malfunction.
  • So does "The Big Bang". "An Egyptian goddess loose on the Orient Express — IN SPACE? Don't worry about a thing, Your Majesty. We're on our way."
  • Unless the current show ends with the Doctor dying permanently (which will obviously never happen) or possibly retiring as a curator for a museum after becoming Tom Baker again we can only assume this is the only way Doctor Who could possibly end. After all...
    Ood Sigma: This song is ending, but the story never ends.
  • Clara and the Lady Me (née Ashildr) end their run on the series this way, with their own TARDIS at their command and new adventures ahead of them. Even though Clara knows she must ultimately return to the trap street to face the Raven, she is quite happy to take "the long way 'round" to get there.
• Don't Look Deeper: At the end, Aisha's been restored from backup and a full body replacement is being made for her safely in China, outside of her manufacturer's control, where she's hopefully safe and free to create the life she wishes.
• Elementary's final episode, "Their Last Bow", ends with Joan and Sherlock continuing being private investigators after Joan took a several month leave for chemotherapy.
• The series finale of ER ends as a series of ambulances carrying patients from a mass casualty pulls into the ambulance bay of the hospital, effectively showing that the circle keeps turning, the adventure continues and there will always be work for the doctors of the ER. The series also pays tribute to the old gang; prospective medical student Rachel Greene—daughter of original main character Dr. Mark Greene, who died roughly halfway through the show's run—joins in on the action after being introduced to emergency medicine by a Back for the Finale Dr. Carter, implying that within a few years there will be another Dr. Greene at County General. In a neat bit of Book Ends, Dr. [Mark] Greene called to "Dr. Carter" at the end of the first episode; the series ends with Dr. Carter calling to (future) "Dr. [Rachel] Greene." Meanwhile the old gang—including Drs. Corday, Weaver, and Rasgotra—are shown to be happily settled in to their lives post-County.
• Everybody Loves Raymond: The finale changes almost nothing and other than an extended Last Supper inspired shot and a little bit of drama, it is a regular episode that, if shown out of order, would probably be unrecognizable as a series finale by casual viewers.
• Father Ted ends with Ted abandoning his move to America, destined to stay on Craggy Island forever.
• The final episode of Full House ends with the Tanners looking back on their latest dilemma and acknowledging that they will have many more adventures ahead of them.
  Jesse: But we stuck it out and we got through it.
  Joey: Just like we always do.
  Danny: Just like we always will.
• Played with in Galavant. On one hand, Gal and Isabella retire to the beachside and Richard and Roberta to the countryside. On the other hand, Madelana is still pursuing the DDEW and Sid and Gareth going to save her from herself. Also, Richard has a dragon now.
• The Korean drama "The Girl Who Sees Smells" ends with the couple getting a call to solve a case of nine people who disappeared on the same day.
• García! closes with Section Nine shutting down for good, all of its documents being declassified, Winters defeated... and García setting off to Paris to look for clues on the whereabouts of Neffenberg, who is shown to be in Yerevan looking for new subjects to resume his experiments.
• Guerrilla: It ends as the group goes off into exile, while pledging they will continue the fight.
• Hercules: The Legendary Journeys had a lot of episodes and a couple TV-Movies that ended with Herc walking down a road, either because he knew he was needed somewhere or he was just looking for another adventure to go on. In the Grand Finale's final scene, Iolaus asks him if he would ever actually settle down and lead a normal life. Hercules admits he's always considered the possibility, but he's just not ready to slow down yet; he'd rather keep on walking, so the show ends with the two heroes heading off into the sunset to see what other adventures await them.
• Highlander had a final scene with Duncan surrounded by mist after defeating the episode’s villain. It was possibly a call back to season 5’s “Homeland” and Duncan saying legends just disappear, or fade into the mists to have adventures someplace else
• Hill Street Blues: The final scene is the precinct office, still in business after a fire. The last words: a police officer answers a phone with "Hill Street."
• Kamen Rider:
  • Kamen Rider Kiva—just as two major characters tie the knot, Wataru's Kid from the Future comes rushing in, seeking help against the "Neo-Fangire". All the Riders suit up, the Arms Monsters transform, and they all leap at the screen. Wonder if the Neo-Fangire had any connection to Dai Shocker...
  • Kamen Rider Decade's story ended with the heroes continuing to travel through many worlds, with homeless main character Tsukasa declaring that the journey itself is his home world.
  • Kamen Rider Double ends with the protagonists taking down a Big Bad Wannabe, followed by this conversation:
  Phillip: Shotaro, you haven't forgotten the catchphrase, have you?
  Shotaro: Of course not! Those who make this city cry will forevermore hear our call...
  Double: Now, count up your crimes!
  • Endless game, last episode of Kamen Rider Ex-Aid, starts a new story for the CR crew, where they work together with Bugsters to cure the Game Disease and work towards a future where Bugsters and humans coexist.
  The Game is forever.
• Kung Fu (1972): In the final episode, "Full Circle", once Kwai Chang Caine is sure that Danny and Zeke are safe and all their enemies defeated, he declines Danny's offer to work on his ranch and wanders off on a new journey.
• The Magicians: In order to kill the Dark King and re-kill The Beast once and for all, the gang destroys the land of Fillory after magically placing its inhabitants in stasis. Afterwards, Margo, Josh, Alice, and Fen disappear after casting a spell to create a new Fillory. Months pass; Kady rejoins her hedge witch friends, Eliot becomes a teacher at Brakebills University and begins a relationship with Charlton, while Penny and Julia are together raising their daughter and travelling the cosmos in search of their missing friends. We cut to New Fillory where the first four are getting ready to release the Fillorians from stasis now that their new home is ready, and they discuss the work ahead of them and the fact that their lives will continue to be a mess of magic and intrigue, which they find oddly comforting. It's implied that the gang will eventually be reunited, and the series ends with Margo pushing the button to release the Filliorians.
• After Monk finally solved the mystery behind his wife's murder, we see him going to advise on a crime scene before the final credits roll.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000 ends with Mike and the bots freed from years of having to watch bad movies on the Satellite of Love, so they move into an apartment together and... watch bad movies on the couch.
  Crow: This film looks kinda of familiar, doesn't it?
• Most every season finale of Odd Squad ends this way.
  • "O is Not For Over" ends with Olive and Otto leaving Precinct 13579 and heading up the tubes to their new, co-run precinct, followed by two agents who enter Precinct 13579 after them, whose identities are not revealed until the Season 2 premiere, "First Day".
  • "Odds and Ends", the second part of the Season 2 finale, ends with Olympia, Otis and Oona charging into battle against invading laser chickens using various gadgets they pull from their Hammerspace spines. Oprah, who is promoted to the department and position of "The Big O" and was set to leave for the Big Office prior to the attack, also joins in on the battle, stating that she can stick around a little longer.
  • "End of the Road", the third part of the Season 3 finale, ends in a similar way to "Odds and Ends". Orla asks if Odd Squad should still exist now that the powers of every villain in the world are safely captured in Olizabeth's box (given to the Big O by her following her Heel–Face Turn), but before anyone can answer, an alien Kaiju rises from behind Tube Central Station. Everyone — the Big O, Olizabeth, Orla, Oswald, Omar and Opal (likely the latter's final battle with everyone following her departure from the Mobile Unit) — all take out various gadgets from their Hammerspace spines and fire it at the odd creature.
• The Outer Limits (1995):
  • In the final scene of "Double Helix", Dr. Martin Nodel, his son Paul, Hope and six students board the alien ship which will take them to the homeworld of the race that seeded Earth with their DNA 60 million years ago. It also serves as a Sequel Hook given that the storyline is continued in "The Origin of Species".
  • In the final scene of "The Human Operators", the operators of Starfighters 31 and 88 plan to search for other starfighters so that they can free their operators.
  • In the ending of "Something About Harry", Zach has now joined the alien hunters as one of their agents.
  • At the end of "Time to Time", Lorelle Palmer has officially joined the time-travel-for-hire agency Chrononics in 2059.
• Perry Mason ends with the camera backing away as Perry, Della, and Paul discuss an upcoming case.
• Person of Interest:
  • The series ends with the destruction of Samaritan and the fall of Northern Lights and Decima but at the cost of Root and Reese’s lives. The Machine is revealed to have saved herself and is restored to Finch's servers, after which she calls Shaw with a new irrelevant number, implying Shaw will continue to do the job.
  • In the third-to-last episode of the series, Team Machine travel to Washington D.C. and discover that three of their former irrelevant numbers — a rakish tech billionaire, an ex-soldier and ex-bank robber, and a thief and conwoman — have teamed up and are receiving and helping irrelevant numbers of their own. Coming before the Grand Finale, the episode sets up that the adventure will continue even if Team Machine don't survive the series...
• Power Rangers:
  • Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue ends with the demons defeated and the Rangers about to retire...only for them to rush off as they hear the sounds of an emergency nearby.
  • Likewise, at the end of Power Rangers S.P.D., though Jack has left the force to pursue his true calling of helping the poor, the remaining Rangers — sporting new colors — stop by to visit, then rush off to another call.
  • These examples are atypical in Power Rangers history, as in all the other post-Zordon-era series, the finale has the Rangers lose their powers (Dino Thunder, Ninja Storm), return their powers back to their mentor since they are no longer needed (Wild Force, RPM), give up their powers to pursue other vocations (Operation Overdrive, Jungle Fury, Lost Galaxy) or leave the scene (Time Force). Since SPD is set some decades in the future, Lightspeed Rescue is the only series to end with a set of Rangers still active in another city at the time of the following season (Wes and Eric kept their powers at the end of Time Force, but the rest of the team went back to the 31st century).
  • Power Rangers Operation Overdrive has a variation—there's no more need for the team as superheroes, but Andrew and Mack are going on an Archaeology Adventure just like the one that prompted the need for superheroes in the first place.
• At the end of Brazilian Soap Opera A Próxima Vítima (The Next Victim), the detective was called to solve another murder.
• Psych concludes with Shawn and Gus finally closing down Psych... so they can open up a new detective agency up-north, that way Shawn can be with Juliet while the two can continue solving crimes and going on adventures.
• The end of Quantum Leap is not just this trope, it's And the Adventure Will Never End: "Sam Beckett never returned home."
• The last episode of the original run of Red Dwarf ended with the closing credits:
  the end?
  THE SMEG IT IS!
• Revenge (2011): At the end of "Two Graves"Nolan is approached by a young man whose mother has been wrongly convicted of embezzlement and murder.
• Sanctuary: The series finale ends with a presumed-dead Magnus introducing Will to a new, underground version of the Sanctuary with "Shall we begin?"
• The Sarah Jane Adventures, partly due to the tragic loss of Elisabeth Sladen, ends by paying tribute with a retrospective montage and the tagline, "And the story goes on... forever."
• Seventeen Moments of Spring is a 12-episode miniseries about Colonel Stirlitz, a Russian Deep Cover Agent in Nazi Germany in the last few months of World War II. The series, while showing film clips of the Russian victory in Berlin, the Red Square victory parade, and the Nuremberg trials, makes a point of not revealing what happens to Stirlitz. The last scene has Stirlitz stopping his car on the way back to Berlin, stepping outside, and taking a moment to contemplate. The narration informs the viewer that with six weeks left in the war, Stirlitz is going back to Berlin, and back to work.
• Season 4 of Sherlock ends with a montage of new adventures.
• Spooks ends on a particularly bittersweet version of this. Ruth is dead, her name added to MI5's enormous memorial wall ^note which lists every character who died over the course of the show's ten-year run, but Section D still has a job to do, and despite being in the grips of one of the most painful Heroic BSODs in TV history, Harry picks up the phone and gets back to work.
• Stargate SG-1:
  • The series ends with the team heading through the gate on yet another mission. Things aren't completely settled, but with the "nullification" (read: death) of the Ori, and the knowledge of the Asgard in Earth's hands, we are confident of a final victory against the remaining, corporeal followers of the Ori (which is shown in the 11th season first SG-1 movie "The Ark of Truth"). Both sequel movies end in this way too.
  • The ending to "Proving Ground", in which a group of cadets have gone through several training scenarios believing that they're the real thing, only for a "real" incident to occur after they finish the last scenario. At the very end, the leader of the group of cadets asks O'Neill if they're really done this time. O'Neill answers yes, just as the SGC's sirens start up again.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation:
  • The series was so classy it got two of these for its finale, and neither of them felt cheap. The first comes in Q's courtroom, where Q drops some cryptic hints on the fate of humanity, including this dialogue:
  Q: That is the exploration that awaits you. Not mapping stars, or studying nebulae, but charting the unknown possibilities of existence.
  Picard: Q, what is it that you're trying to tell me?
  Q: [leans forward to whisper in Picard's ear and then coyly pulls away] You'll find out. In any case, I'll be watching. And if you're very lucky I'll drop by to say hello from time to time. See you... out there.
  • Then, in the next (and final) scene Picard, finally joins the weekly poker game with the rest of his senior officers. After he sits and has a moment of contemplation, we get this dialogue, just before we see the Enterprise fly off into space.:
    Picard: I should have done this a long time ago.
    Troi: You were always welcome.
    Picard: [starts to deal] So, five card stud, nothing wild, and the sky's the limit.
  • While most episodes have the Enterprise continuing on its mission, the pilot also uses this one:
    Picard: Let's see what's out there. Engage.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
  • Given that the series takes place on the eponymous Space Station they couldn't have it shooting off to see what's out there, so there's a variation where the main characters are shown at the end of the pilot episode dealing with the mundane problems involved in running the station.
  • The episode "Our Man Bashir", an Affectionate Parody of Bond films, ends with a Shout-Out to the 'James Bond will return' message when Julian Bashir predicts that his holodeck secret agent alter ego will return for more adventures. Unfortunately he didn't, thanks to legal threats to the Trek scriptwriters from the owners of the Bond franchise.
• Star Trek: Enterprise ended its final episode by combining the legendary "Space, the final frontier" narration split between Picard era, Kirk era and Archer Era Enterprises. In this case since the show was a prequel, we most certainly know that the adventure continues. Even though the final episode was sub-par, that was about the best final scene you could hope for.
• Star Trek: Picard: The final episode ends in a similar way to The Next Generation, with Picard and his friends in a poker game. The Stinger shows Picard's son Jack meeting Q, who says that Picard's Humanity on Trial ordeal is over, but Jack's is just beginning.
• The Strange Calls: At the end of almost every episode, the wrap-up of the episode's plot is interrupted by a new strange call with another weird situation for the characters to deal with, which is never shown onscreen.
• The Supernatural season two finale "All Hell Breaks Loose, Part Two" ends with Dean loading up the Impala's trunk and saying "We got work to do". They had just defeated the Yellow-Eyed Demon, the Big Bad of the first two seasons, and the show had yet to be renewed by the time this episode originally aired. So despite a few lingering threads like Dean's crossroads deal, the demons that escaped the recently opened Hellgate and the revelation that Sam was fed demon blood as a baby, it would have served as an overall serviceable series finale had the CW chosen not to continue it.
• Super Sentai:
  • The finale of Chikyuu Sentai Fiveman sees the Hoshikawa siblings, having defeated the Silver Imperial Army Zone and reconnected with their parents, boarding Star Five and heading into space to bring their parents home.
  • The GoGo Sentai Boukenger finale has Satoru head off into space on the GoGo Voyager to search for more Precious, with Sakura tagging along for a Maybe Ever After with him. Gekiranger vs. Boukenger shows what they were up to in space, with the implication that they also had a Relationship Upgrade offscreen.
  • Engine Sentai Go-onger ends with the Go-Ongers on their way to fight the remnants of the Gaiarc forces who are attacking another dimension. This doubles as a Sequel Hook for Shinkenger vs. Go-Onger.
  • Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger ends with the Rangers departing Earth in search for the Second Greatest Treasure in the Universe, which Marvelous believes is on The Empire's homeworld.
  • By the end of the Kaitou Sentai Lupinranger VS Keisatsu Sentai Patranger epilogue, the Ganglers have been reduced to a few remnants that have the last pieces of the Lupin Collection, and the (now unmasked to the world) Lupinrangers still intend to steal back all the pieces—including the ones the Patrangers are currently using as equipment—to wish Arsène Lupin Back from the Dead for Noël, putting them at odds with each other yet again.
• Voyagers!: Bogg is cleared and it's revealed that Jeff was always destined to be a Voyager himself, so the two can continue roaming the time stream together.
• The finale of Warehouse 13 does it twice. First, as Pete seeks reassurance from Mrs Frederic that the Warehouse won't be moving any time soon, Artie announces they have a ping, and they all start talking at once. The characters gradually fade away ... and we move to "several decades" later, where Claudia is watching a bunch of new agents also all arguing about a ping.
• We Are Who We Are: The series doesn't end with a definitive conclusion. Caitlin and Fraser run away together while exploring how the pair identify in sexual orientation or gender.
• The Grand Finale of the 2017 series of The Worst Witch ends with everyone celebrating Mildred's promotion as Mildred embraces her new friends, as well as Ethel, symbolizing that more adventures for them are yet to come, but as for the viewers, their journey at Cackle's Academy has come to an end.
• Xena: Warrior Princess: In the final episode, Xena dies and chooses not to get resurrected, but Gabrielle takes up Xena's weapons and Xena officially makes Gabrielle her successor, then Gabrielle is comforted to see Xena's ghost is sticking around. In the final scene, Gabrielle and Xena receive word that Egypt needs help from "a girl with a Chakram", so they get on a boat and start sailing there.
• Every episode of Zoboomafoo ends with Zoboo leaping back to Madagascar and the Kratts running off to visit some new environment.

Music

• Daniel Amos' album series The Alarma Chronicles included an ongoing story in the liner notes. In the final album, Fearful Symmetry, the narrator dies and goes to Heaven, which just means more opportunity for exploration: "The journey is over and only begun."

Podcasts

• Live From Mount Olympus ends with Perseus and Andromeda leaving for Argos, where new adventures await.

Sports

• It's kind of a downer ending when you hear the IOC President declare "I declare the [number] Olympic Winter/Summer Games closed!" and an Adventure Continues reaction when they say "And in accordance with tradition, I call upon the youth of the world to assemble four years from now, to celebrate the Games of the [next number] Olympic Winter/Summer Games!"

Tabletop Games

• Two out of the four Gehenna scenarios in Vampire: The Masquerade can end on this kind of note, each of them offering opportunities for the players to continue the chronicle: should the players side with Lilith in "Fair Is Foul," she rewards them for their part in killing Caine by feeding them some of her blood, transforming them into Lilin and allowing them entry into her garden; from there they can access every spirit world accessible, offering numerous opportunities to go adventuring. "The Crucible Of God," ends with the Curse of Caine being destroyed once and for all, allowing the player characters to rebuild the world as mortals—unless you picked the "Here We Go Again!" ending, in which case, the players become Second Generation vampires and get to restart Kindred society alongside humanity.

Theme Parks

• Just before exiting Universal's Islands of Adventure in Orlando, FL, guests pass under a rock work bridge that has the words "The Adventure Lives On◊" carved into it.

Video Games

• 16 Ways to Kill a Vampire at McDonalds: One of the unlockables is about Lucy, Maggie, and Luke working together to clear out a McDonald's infested with 16 vampires, and the true ending has a chance of having Claire the adorable cashier becoming a vampire hunter herself.
• Absented Age: Squarebound: Karen defeats the Ganger who took her first fragment, but she still has three more fragments to obtain before she can complete herself and there's still the question of who turned Karen into a ghost and rewrote the past. The anchor in Mika's house tells the player to hold on to their save file in preparation for the sequel, Absented Age: Ghostbound.
• Ota's route in AI: The Somnium Files ends this way. After Mayumi and Ota reconcile, Date receives a call from Boss with some updates on the case. Date and Aiba say that there's still a lot to investigate, and it ends on that note. And then you finish the Annihilation Route and realize that it's not going to end well...
• A rather epic version of this happens in Alundra, where after destroying Melzas and saving Inoa, Alundra walks off into the proverbial sunset, only to see ominous clouds gathering over a distant valley. Heroic music starts playing as Alundra smiles and walks towards them, signifying the beginning of a new adventure.
• ANNO: Mutationem: In the ending, Ann finally severs her connection with Amok and Hinterland, curing her "Entangleitis", as well rescuing Ryan once the matter was settled, and Ann reconciles with herself wanting to run away from her family to keep them safe from herself. However, Dr. G assigns Ann as a pair of eyes for The Consortium for any future anomalies since the unknown faction that engineered C's actions is still out there (though he has at least proven that the Consortium are more than willing to engage with Ann in good faith), and after Ann takes Ayane to see the ocean during the daylight, Ayane enthusiastically talks about how she'll stick by Ann in all their inevitable future adventures.
• At the end of Atelier Meruru: The Apprentice of Arland, before the credits, Dessier says that he knows this isn't the end, but the beginning, as Arls, now part of the Arland Republic, has a bright future. Meruru expresses a similar sentiment and then you get to see a bit of how her adventures continue, based on which ending you qualified for.
• Baldur's Gate III: Depending on your choices, some of the characters' endings fall under this.
  • Should you free Orpheus and ensure Lae'zel survives the final battle, she will become a dragon rider and lead a revolt against Vlaakith. Before leaving she thanks the player character for all that they've done and asserts that they will forever be remembered as a liberator by her people.
  • If you completed Karlach and Wyll's storylines either you or Wyll can convince Karlach to go with one of you into Avernus so she'll live and go on fighting the forces of hell, potentially even killing Zariel and very likely killing Mizora should Wyll be the one to join her. It should be noted that the scene of her arriving with the player character or Wyll in Avernus was patched in due to criticisms of her ending being an Anti-Climax.
  • If you convinced Astarion not to ascend and not to kill the many vampire spawn Cazador sired, he can go join his siblings in the Underdark and help them lead the other vampire spawn Cazador was keeping prisoner. If you romanced him, you can suggest you two go on another adventure together, potentially to find a way to let him enjoy the sunlight again.
  • For Shadowheart, both her Selunite and Justiciar endings can be open-ended. If she's a Selunite and ended the curse, she can suggest travelling with the PC to seek out a fresh start in lieu of homesteading. If she's a Justiciar but freed her parents, she can reject the idea of rebuilding the Sharran Coven in Baldur's Gate and be a travelling preacher instead.
  • If Gale lives, he'll note that the Crown of Karsus is somewhere in the waters near Baldur's Gate. He's wise enough to know that the party should not just hope against hope it remains lost there. If you convinced him to seek out Mystra's forgiveness, he will resolve to find it and give it to her and he seems confident that she'll heal him and make him her Chosen once more. If you didn't do that and encouraged his more reckless behavior he'll decide to use the Crown to command Karsus's weave, ascend to godhood; he essentially resolves to succeed where Karsus failed. He'll even suggest that he'd love to make the player character his Chosen should they become amenable to the idea.
• Batman: Arkham Asylum ends with the Joker apprehended, Arkham reclaimed by Gotham PD, and Batman — who's just been beaten from here to kingdom come in the course of the night — talking with Jim Gordon. When Gordon says he should go home and rest, an APB goes out saying that Two-Face has just robbed a bank... and Batman flies back into Gotham on the Batplane.
• Batman: Arkham Origins: Once the main plotline is over, the player can continue the game, tying up all the loose ends.
  Batman: Well, if you're up for it, I've got a few loose ends to tie up out here—and I could use your help.
  Alfred: You can count on it. And when you get home, we can finally have that Christmas dinner I've been keeping warm for you—for our breakfast.
• The ending of Borderlands 2 has the Vault Hunters discovering that the Vault Key is a map to vaults all over the galaxy.
  Mordecai: Heh. You know what that means.
  Lilith: Yep. No rest for the wicked.
• C-12: Final Resistance ends with Vaughn defeating the Alien Leader, moments before Dr. Carter tells him there's still more work to do. The two of them then fly away in a spaceship as the credits roll.
• Celestial Hearts: In the ending, Kayah, Helen, and Achilles travel to the surface in order to stop Lilith, who survived the Final Boss fight.
• In one of Chrono Trigger's Multiple Endings, Crono, Marle, and Lucca end up piloting the Epoch once more to rescue Crono's mom (and 1-11 cats), who accidentally fell through a Gate. If you decided to beat Lavos without resurrecting Crono, the final cutscene shows the gang getting ready to find a way to bring Crono back.
• Cult of the Lamb: After defeating Narinder in the Refuse ending, the player is free to continue crusading, growing in power, and developing their cult with no time limit or restrictions. A later update added a post-game storyline in which the Lamb must defeat the Four Bishops once again to give rest to their spirit (as well as to claim them as followers).
• Devil May Cry 4: The second epilogue features Dante, Trish, and Lady discussing the events of the game when they receive a call for their next gig. Cue them smashing out of the agency, complete with Angels Pose and background explosion.
  Dante: Come on, babes...
  All Three: ...LET'S ROCK!
• Devil May Cry 5: Nero, Nico, Lady, and Trish continue Devil May Cry's business (with Lady and Trish off to a new job from Morrison the last time we see them) while Dante and Vergil are in the Demon World, alternately fighting demons and each other, though on a more friendly basis.
• Digimon World -next 0rder-: After defeating the final boss, the player character returns back to their own world, only to find they and the other characters have been summoned back to deal with a new problem. And there are all those other Digimon to bring back to the city...
• Dragon Age: Origins could end this way, though special mention goes to the ending if you romanced Morrigan and decide to try to find her. The DLC module Witch Hunt can end with you and Morrigan stepping off into the unknown together.
• Dragon Quest IX takes this trope to an extreme. Not only does the ending message say "To Be Continued...", it immediately puts you in the post-game epilogue ready to take on new quests.
• Dual Hearts ends with Rumble finally getting his wish at the cost of Tumble's life. When asked what he wishes for most, Tumble insists that as a treasure hunter, he values treasure above all else. He adds that he knows what to wish for and the scene abruptly shifts to him walking slowly down a road. He asks "What treasure will this road take us to?" and breaks into a full run with Tumble by his side.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Played straight in all the main series games. Once you've completed the main quest, you're free to keep exploring the (vast) game world, complete the Loads and Loads of Sidequests, and complete any of the faction questlines. Your adventure continues until you get bored of exploring. Later games also have expansion packs and DLC content to continue the adventure as well.
  • The Action-Adventure Gaiden Game The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard has Cyrus, the protagonist, leave for future adventures at the end. Sadly, the game's poor sales meant the planned sequels were cancelled.
• Fake Happy End: In the non-destroy endings, the party rejects the idea of destroying the tower's power source because doing so will expose magic and demons to the world, which would destabilize human society. They seek out other towers in the hopes of reversing their demon transformation while trying to survive as invisible beings.
• Less frequent in the Fallout series, however, as New Vegas and pre-Broken Steel Fallout 3 both end the moment you end the final main quest, with no mean to keep on exploring the Wasteland. New Vegas still implies that the adventures of the Courier are far from over, though. Fallout 4 plays it straight, similar to the Elder Scrolls sister series above.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy V ends with Bartz going back on his adventures, Faris ditching being a princess to resume pirating (unless Lenna died, then she stays a princess), and Lenna ruling Tycoon. Then they all join up with the lonely Krile and ride of to another adventure together.
  • Final Fantasy XII sets up nicely for Revenant Wings, with Vaan shown piloting his own airship in the ending and Penelo stating "I'll be going too, of course. Every good sky pirate needs a partner, right?"
  • Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker is the definitive conclusion to a storyline that started with the original 1.0 release of FFXIV, but the game ends on an high note that leaves the door open for more adventures in post-launch updates: the danger that had threatened Hydaelyn since well before the Sundering has been dealt with, and the world is at long last safe, with the Scions officially disbanding and going their separate ways, and the Player Character stepping down from their role as the Warrior of Light to travel the world as an adventurer once more.
• Final Fantasy Legend II ends as the protagonist, this time joined by both parents, set off on another adventure, soon after completing the one that comprised the game's plot.
• Freedom Fighters (2003) ends with Chris and Isabella getting ready to defend themselves from a retaliatory attack from the Soviet army.
• Golvellius: Valley of Doom ends with hero Kelesis defeating the title character and freeing Rena. The seven crystals he had collected in his journey enter Golvellius' body and restore him to the side of goodness, and Kelesis and Rena return to their kingdom but both leave almost immediately to search for Kelesis' sister. They're even met on their way by Golvellius who accompanies them.
• Hades: After convincing Hades and Persephone to make up, causing the latter to return to the Underworld and the former to introduce her and Zagreus to his siblings officially, Hades hires Zagreus to be his security consultant for the Underworld. Specifically, Zagreus needs to continue to attempt to escape the Underworld so Hades can find and plug loopholes that others might use to escape, thus allowing the player to continue playing even after the story has concluded. Also, after Zagreus convinces the Olympians to come down for a grand feast, they continue aiding his escapes, even though he's unable to break out just yet.
• The Harvest Moon and its many offshoots are like this. When some game-specific significant event occurs, such as your character's marriage, the credits roll. Then, you can continue playing. In fact, there is often some post-end content such as new seeds, or new NPCs to romance.
• Whether you win or lose a run in Into the Breach, all your surviving pilots will jump to a different timeline to try and save it, letting you carry over one pilot to another run.
• Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy
  • The lightside ending goes thus:
    Kyle: There's still a whole galaxy of trouble out there. Ready for another mission?
    Jaden: As luck would have it, I am. [Credits roll to Star Wars theme]
  • And the darkside ending is similar, except the player character is now in control of an imperial warship, an artifact of incredible power and the rest of the Jedi out to kill or capture them.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • Kingdom Hearts ended with Sora, Donald and Goofy chasing down Pluto in a field.
  • Kingdom Hearts II ended with Sora, Riku and Kairi getting a letter from King Mickey.
• Both Knights of the Old Republic games, as your Player Character vanishes into the Unknown Regions to find out just what set off the inciting incident in the first place.
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC ends with Estelle and Joshua after all the fighting, tragedy, and reuniting together, decide to leave Liberl in search of Renne. After all, there's a big world out there to explore and they've got reputations to make as Bracers, just so long as they travel together. And as later games would show, they indeed had many adventures along the way.
• The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning ends with Spyro purifying Cynder and preventing her from freeing the Dark Master, but the war;s not over yet.
• Every The Legend of Zelda game since Majora's Mask.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask ends with Link leaving Termina to continue his search for Navi.
  • The one from The Legend of Zelda: Oracle Games is a "you know what happens next" ending.
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: The ending features Link sailing out with the pirates to find a new land. Possibly the most unambiguous moment of this in the series. And one of the saddest. Lastly, it's also one of the few in the series to get an actual follow-up.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild ends with Link and Zelda working together to rebuild Hyrule. Link and Zelda agree to keep exploring the new world and continue their research in hopes of restoring the kingdom of Hyrule someday.
• Loop Hero ends with the Hero successfully defeating Omega and stopping his unmaking of reality. However Yota, the Goddess of Probability explains that there are countless alternate timelines where the Hero failed and Omega will continue his work. The two of them resolve to continue fighting against Omega across those alternate timelines in order to save them all, a task they even acknowledge will likely have no end.
• LunarLux: In the ending, Saros is defeated and Bella takes his place as Lunex General. However, Lunex Force still needs to worry about Comet Coda, the Nemesis civilization, and creating an Anti Serum to restore anticores back into humans.
• Mari and the Black Tower: In the ending, due to Ned's warning that the Black Tower will reappear in the 2000s, as well as the god Zamas's connection to the miasma, Abbie and Mari know that they must go on a journey to further investigate the miasma and how to stop it.
• Max Blaster and Doris de Lightning Against the Parrot Creatures of Venus: In the game's Golden Ending, Doris and Max have a newfound respect for each other once they realize they successfully stopped the invasion and worked together the whole time. The Director calls them in for a mission on Saturn, and they happily accept.
• The ending for Mega Man V (otherwise known as Rockman World 5) for the Game Boy. The Stardroids are destroyed, Wily cowers, but leads to a chase.
• The ending of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. Sort of. Snake knows that he probably doesn't have long left to live, but he wants to stick around long enough to see what a world without the Patriots will look like. He knows that his fight is over, but he decides to take Otacon and Sunny along with him for one last adventure. Cue road trip.
• Invoked in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance: After defeating Senator Armstrong and thwarting his plan to spark a global war to take the Presidency and establish a Social Darwinist regime, Raiden leaves his friends at Maverick to continue the fight against Armstrong's PMC, World Marshal, on his terms.
• Minecraft: Story Mode ends Episode 8 with Ivor stealing the Flint and Steel and the Atlas Guide so he can have more adventures in other worlds. The player can decide whether to chase after him and join him on another adventure, or just let him go, confident that he'll be back one day.
• Although they don't really have any "endings," MMORPGs often give this treatment to the aftermath of major global events. The world has been saved and its would-be destroyer is now on farm status, but (barring developer abandonment) who knows what the next update will bring? This is especially evident in games with an Expansion Pack structure.
• This applies in Muramasa: The Demon Blade to Kisuke's second and third endings. The narrator even lampshades it in one of them by mentioning that the events of the game are the first story of 20. Momohime's second ending is also like this, with her leaving her new adopted home to unravel the secrets behind her Identity Amnesia. Arashimaru's second ending looks like it will be this, with Jiraya and Tsunade setting out together to thwart the schemes of So Xian, but the narrator decides to skip ahead to the end and give the audience a "sneak peek" of the final battle.
• Neverwinter Nights 2: The base game averts the trope, due to the nature of its ending. However, the expansion Mask of the Betrayer ends this way in its good endings, as does the second expansion Storm of Zehir.
• No More Heroes: The first ending shows Travis being ambushed by a challenger while on the toilet. The "true" ending went straight into Mind Screw territory.
• No More Heroes III has Travis finally defeat all his opponents and be the number one ranked assassin once more. But just as things settle down, FU's father arrives and tries to start his own invasion only for Travis and Jennae's kids from the future arrive to kill him and introduce Travis to his grandson whom he had had fought earlier (and luckily didn't kill, Travis mention that something in him wouldn't let him do it, turns out it was maternal instinct). They then invite Travis and his posse to come to the future where Henry is causing trouble much to Travis' confusion.
• Ōkami ends with Amaterasu and Waka sailing the Ark of Yamato back to the Celestial Plane. A Sequel Hook of the finest order.
• Ōkamiden ends with one of these, with Kuni leaving home, and saying that this wasn't the last adventure he'd have with Chibiterasu.
• Papers, Please: Completing the game without fleeing the country or helping EZIC at all results in one of the game's three good endings, namely the only ending where you keep your job. As a result of a new agreement with Arstotzka's neighboring country Kolechia, the checkpoint is reopened one week after the last regular day of the game, and you're told to return to your post on that day. This also reveals the code to unlock Endless mode.
• PAYDAY 3: After pulling off the final heist in the launch storyline, Touch The Sky, the PAYDAY gang successfully ruin Sharke's reputation, left Garnet to be sued for billions after the Wixia deal falls through, and re-secure their ill-gotten cash using quantum-level encryption. The plan now? Steal more valuables and money to put that encryption to the test. Meanwhile, Concord disposes of Sharke and Garnet and doesn't plan on stopping his conspiracy any time soon.
• Pirates of the Caribbean: The Legend of Jack Sparrow ends in this manner. Having fought their way through scads of enemies and made it to their ship, Jack and Will catch up to the pirates that betrayed them in the first place. Unfortunately, it turns out that the skull of Teouacata was cursed and the entire crew blames the duo for their misfortune. They surround Jack and Will who laments the situation. Jack merely states that such is the life of a pirate.
• Every game of Pokémon. Beat the Elite Four and became the Champion? Odds are that there still are heaps of Pokédex spots to fill, contests to win, Optional Bosses to fight, minigames to play with friends, NPCs to encounter, items to find...
• Shortly before Portal 2 was officially announced, the ending for Portal was changed from Chell escaping the Aperture Science testing facility to fall unconscious on the ground outside to add an Aperture Science robot dragging her back in.
• The "leave Paradise" ending to Postal 2: Paradise Lost. As the Postal Dude and Champ walk off into the sunset, finally leaving Paradise behind them, the narrator goes on about how the people of the town have taught them a valuable lesson about the tenacity of the human spirit, and that the two know that Paradise will continue on... and then it gets nuked. Again. Cue the Dude turning to Champ:
  Eh, fuck 'em. C'mon, Champ, we've got adventures waiting elsewhere.
• Psychonauts ends this way—when Raz fulfills his lifelong dream of becoming a psychonaut and reunites with his father he is immediately thrust into another adventure.
• The ending to Quest for Glory IV ended with the main character being teleported out of the middle of his award ceremony in order to save Silmaria. One of the endings to the final game in the series has the main character turning down the chance to be king in order to continue adventuring and fighting evil in other lands.
• The end of Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army shows Narumi and Raidou taking on another case.
• In Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time, Ratchet was going to Ride Into the Stars on his own, but eventually Clank decides to go with him until they find Ratchet's family, leaving Sigmund as Senior Caretaker of the Great Clock.
• Return to Castle Wolfenstein (2001) ends with BJ off on another mission fighting Nazis.
• At the end of Sakura Wars 2: Thou Shalt Not Die, Ichiro Ogami being dispatched to Paris to lead a new combat revue in Sakura Wars 3: Is Paris Burning?. Then, at the end of Is Paris Burning?, Ogami has to return to Tokyo to regroup with his old friends from the Imperial Combat Revue, setting the stage for Sakura Wars 4: Fall in Love, Maidens.
• Happens to Magoichi Saika in her Blue Ending in Sengoku Basara 3/Samurai Heroes. Before she can end her contract with Mitsunari, he hires her again, saying there's still work to be done.
• The conclusion to the Morning Star story arc in Shadowverse has every character set out on a new adventure to other worlds to chase after Nexus now that their own world is safe.
• Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. If another faction gets transcendence before you do, the game ends with you returning to human form to spread the life of Planet to the stars.
• Solatorobo: Red the Hunter has Red and Elh riding the Asmodeus together towards their next adventure in The Stinger, following a long journey averting The End of the World as We Know It and coming to grips with their own origins and supernatural natures.
• Sonic Adventure Similar to Mega Man V, ends with Eggman escaping, and Sonic chasing him.
• The first three Spyro the Dragon games give you that exact line after you beat the final boss and watch the ending cutscene.
• Spyro: Shadow Legacy ends with everyone celebrating Spyro's victory, but they know that the Sorcerer is still out there and they prepare for his return.
• While StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void wraps up the series(and according to Word of God the franchise's) story, potential conflicts could be brewing. The Tal'darim no longer follow Amon but are not good, or willing to join the rest of the unified Protoss. With Zagara now leading the swarm, the Zerg have begun laying claim to worlds surrounding their territory.
• Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order ends with Cal deciding that the holocron with the locations of Force-sensitive children is too dangerous to exist with the Empire still around, and as such he destroys it. As he and the Stinger Mantis' crew then stand in a semicircle, Cal asks one question before the credits roll:
  Cal: So... where to now?
• Street Fighter as a whole does this chronologically:
  • The ending monologue that is heard during the credits of Street Fighter IV:
    "This marks the end of an epic battle. The winner emerges with the pride and honor of a hard won victory, but also with a nagging sense of uncertainty. The loser walks away with a heart heavy with shame and anger, ready to make a new start and fight again another day. Both warriors know that this isn't truly the end. Neither one's potential has been truly reached, and there is much hard training ahead. They'll never forget the days of exchanging blows at a fevered pitch. They'll never forget the days of lost hope, of self-loathing. Once they've caught their breath, the warriors will return to the ring. This is the burden of the true fighter. There is no other choice. Who knows where their next opponent lies? This story may be over, but the battle is just beginning!"
  • The farthest events in the Street Fighter timeline is Alex's Ending in Street Fighter III where he is having a rematch with Ryu, after previously getting his ass completely handed to him. Ryu appears to be winning the match and even boasts to Alex if is that all he's got, Alex responds he's just warming up and the real fight begins now. and after that it ends, leaving it up to fan interpretation who wins the match.
• Happens at the end of Stinkoman 20X6. Stinkoman rescues his friends Pan Pan and 1-Up from the clutches of Shadowy Figure, but the crystal used to power Mecha-Trogador is broken into pieces and scattered across Planet K.
  1-Up: We should prolly make sure no one tries to reassemble them.
  Stinkoman: Hey, Saying-Words Guy! That's a great idea for a sequel or maybe an animated series!
• SturmFront: The Mutant War ends with you defeating the mutant hive boss, but the world is still a mutant-infested hellhole. You then reloads and steps out to a new world of slaughter:
  Death and destruction lies in Siegfried's wake. Even in his darkest moments, sheer hatred persevered when flesh and steel began to falter. But this inferno cannot be smothered. Siegfried's very existence is poised on the perpetuation of war and violence. And so he marches on, against no one, against the world, battle for battle's same.
  Ever onwards, the Eternal soldier.
• In the ending to Super Robot Wars UX, Kurou Daijuuji is working for Ruri Hadou, who has him investigating the recent blood monster incidents, a reference to Kishin Hishou Demonbane.
• TearRing Saga ends with the two protagonists, Runan and Holmes, setting off on a voyage in search of another adventure along with their love interests and a couple of friends. The last scene of the game is of their ship, the Sea Lion, sailing off to unspecified destination.
• Threads of Fate gets this treatment with a stinger clip after winning both scenarios, with Rue and Mint joining Claus in the search for another relic.
• The Touryst ends with the Tourist and the Old Tourist riding an ancient rocket ship into space, looking for further adventure and guided with nothing more than a simple set of coordinates that form a Title Drop.
• Uncharted 4: A Thief's End ends with Nate and Elena retiring from treasure hunting permanently to begin a more savory career in archaeology. They are eventually joined by their teenage daughter, Cassie. Meanwhile, Sam and Sully partner up and embark on another adventure in Portugal or Brazil.
• The Sentinels campaign of Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne ends with Maiev continuing her pursuit of Illidan.
• Wild ARMs ends with the heroes defeating the demons but Rudy and Jack head out on their next adventure while Cecilia remains in Adlehyde to serve as queen. However, after a few days she realises royalty is not for her and catches up to them so they continue to wander Filgaia as a trio.
• Wild ARMs: Million Memories ends this way too. Mother and the Quarter Knights are (seemingly) defeated but Cocytus, the Prophets and Asgard, Brioniac and the Veruni are still at large so your party sets out to deal with them too. (In reality, the game was shut down in February 2020, so they had to get the Rudy's betrayal plot out of the way and left a lot of the other threads hanging.)
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt potentially ends this way for both Geralt and Ciri. Geralt continues to wander the land killing monsters for money if he does not pursue a relationship with either Triss or Yennefer (or if he blows his chances with them both), and Ciri can choose to become a full-fledged witcher herself.
• Xenosaga Episode III ends with Shion, Allen, Jr., the Elsa crew & the Godwin sisters setting out to find Lost Jerusalem (Earth) and prevent the destruction of the universe. This was probably the Sequel Hook for Episode IV.

Visual Novels

• Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney has two of these moments, the first coming right before the (short-term) "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue credits and the second at the end of said credits:
  (Before credits) Apollo: ...And that's pretty much the end of my story. For now, anyway. I've still got a long way to go. And this power of mine... well, it needs some work. But... there's hope now. We'd lost it, but somehow, we found it again. That's why people are smiling again... Hope. Yeah, I think I'll keep at this lawyer thing for a while. Oops, training time. Gotta go. Chords of Steel... here comes Justice!
  (After credits) Vera: The door is open. The world is waiting. Thank you.
• Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc ends with Naegi and the other survivors leaving the school, ready to face whatever's out there.
• Highway Blossoms:
  • While they aren't in any hurry to go on another wacky treasure hunt, it's clear Amber and Marina have no intention of settling down and will keep travelling the country together.
  • The Stinger also indicates no signs of stopping for Mariah's posse, as they have stumbled upon news of a missing car carrying wads of cash. After the music festival ends, they go on another treasure hunt, so to speak.
• Marco & the Galaxy Dragon ends with Marco, having defeated Astaroth and reconnected with her long lost family, returning to the stars to look for new treasures. She also wants to find Arco, who took away Marco’s memories of their time together before disappearing into a black hole.
• Phantom Thief Silver Cat: In the Golden Ending, Ginka doesn't let being tortured for a week stop her from immediately preparing for the next heist after her rescue.
• WILL: A Wonderful World: Ultimately, most characters either have a goal or gain an ability that doesn't end when their story does (Chang's justice, Jimmy's shrinking, Wen Zhaoren's return to art in his ending]]), or they don't quite achieve their main goal but are still optimistic about what's to come ([[spoiler:Li Wen in her ending, Carlos and Hotaru's searches for Alicia).
• Zero Escape: All three games end with some sort of this.
  • Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors: All the reveals that matter for now have been done, you have accomplished the reason you came here, all the significant players have escaped the ship or should we say building and all the wrongdoers have been punished... except Zero, who flees from your speeding SUV full of characters who don't hate her but feel she should be brought to justice.
  • Virtue's Last Reward: The AB project is a sucess. So you go back from the future, and get ready to infiltrate a Mars mission simulation in hopes to avert the Bad Future you've just survived.
  • Zero Time Dilemma: You've just created a reality where nobody dies and you escape by dooming your alternate consciousnesses to blow up without them knowing what's going on, and Zero is no longer a threat. But the members of C-Team devote their lives to the tailing of an Omnicidal Maniac, and Sean, Eric and Mira are off to create a happy reality where Mira does not become a Serial Killer. Happy adventures, guys.

Webcomics

• 1/0 destroys the comic's universe, but sends the characters off to another one first.
• 8-Bit Theater ends with a "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue where everyone else has settled down, but Fighter and Black Mage are still adventuring around like at the beginning of the strip.
• Boy and Dog: Rowan and Murphy once get told a story that ends with the protagonist leaving for another adventure.
• Burning Stickman Presents...Something! ended like this, with the main characters, having beaten the villain and saved the world, being sent out to stop an armored car robbery, with Franco remarking, "It's gonna be a good day." The author was going to quote the Justice League Unlimited ending instead, but his brother, on whom Franco was based, objected and suggested the actual ending line.
• Dawn of Time went on hiatus at the end of one story arc but before the beginning of another, creating this effect.
• EATATAU!!! ends on Breaking the Fellowship, with the Tau protagonists earmarking a feral world for expansion, and the Renegade Space Marine and his adopted dark eldar daughter taking a relic of his Primarch back to the chapter.
• Done half way in Errant Story: Jon and Sarine get some closure with a Happily Ever After (and Babies Ever After, sort of) ending, but Meji and Sara are still out there, having things happen to them and vice versa.
• Girls with Slingshots ends with Hazel and Zach walking off into the distance on their way to the café to celebrate the birth of Maureen and Jameson's baby, with Hazel saying she finally has something to write about. In the final panel, McPedro is seen running in the opposite direction, headed to an unknown destination.
• Girly ends with the daughters of Winter and Otra, and Autumn and Chuy having an adventure as hero and sidekick.
  Never the end.
• Irregular Webcomic! ends this way for all of the themes.
• Odysseus The Rebel diverges from the original tale in this manner. After Odysseus reunites with his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus and destroys the rapacious suitors who would claim the throne of Ithaca, he realizes that he's become a much different person than the King of Ithaca was when he left decades ago to fight in the Trojan War. Odysseus concludes that his true purpose is as an explorer and nomad, urges his wife to remarry, and sets off alone to the lands beyond the sight of the Greek gods. The final illustration features Odysseus sailing away from his homeland once more, with this title text:
  Until the End of Time
• True Believers: The comic ends with Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson still Happily Married, and Joe Quesadilla eliminated... and then MJ gets kidnapped by the Green Goblin, prompting Spidey to swing to her rescue.
• BOO! It's Sex ends with the girls moving out of the house, though they agree to see each other next year. Then, a new crop of freshmen move in and find Tara's tequila bottle, promising a new year of ghostly sex education.

Web Original

• Cartoon Network's website features a Ben 10 game based on the episode where the Mayan Sword was the MacGuffin. In the end, a Mad Scientist abducts Ben, Foreshadowing the plot of another game.
• The final chapter of Help Not Wanted ends with the four goblin protagonists collecting their payment for completing their first major contract, and then taking a second one and deciding they're going to keep doing them from now on.
• In the last chapter of Pay Me, Bug!, Grif reveals to the crew that he paid for the damage caused by their last job from the advance on their next one.
• Red vs. Blue likes this. The original five seasons, or Blood Gulch Chronicles, ended with dialogue mirroring the very first episode. Revelation ends with the Reds and Blues returning to their bases in a box canyon to have more zany adventures. After all they went through—all the crazy things that happened, the people who died, everything—life was going to go on, the same way it had before.
• The last episode of Slowbeef's Let's Play of Metroid Prime concludes with him unwrapping his copy of Metroid Prime: Echoes.
• Worm's last chapter has the Undersiders, reinvigorated with new members, setting out to take down some bad guys (so that they can continue their own Neighbourhood-Friendly Gangsters policies) and, in Imp's words, "drop Teacher (the guy set up as the new Big Bad) down an elevator shaft".
• This beautiful amateur animation ends with the protagonists riding back into their hometown, dropping the map into the hands of a couple squabbling friends and riding off with a curvaceous person each. This is exactly the same as the beginning, except there is a couple of them. It is implied the circle will continue.

Web Videos

• In To The Death, a young janitor witnesses the duel that allows a student to graduate from a futuristic Laser Sword fighting school. After the bout ends the man who has been standing next to her talking about the fight reveals himself to be the master of the school, and having noticed her interest, asks her if she wants to become a student. She seems both nervous and intrigued by the proposal, and the implication is she will say yes and one day stand in that same room to fight a duel to graduate.

Western Animation

• Adventure Time:
  • At the end of the pilot, after saving Princess Bubblegum, Pen and Jake spot ninjas stealing an old man's diamonds and chase after them.
  • The Grand Finale "Come Along With Me" ends on this note: Once everything’s said and done, Finn, Jake, and all the other surviving characters move on with their lives and are implied to go on many more adventures. And the Distant Finale shows that adventuring duos just like Finn and Jake will continue to rise and save the world. “The fun will never end, it's Adventure Time”. Specifically, it's done with the new characters Beth and Shermy, with the former being a descendant of Jake.
  • The Adventure Time: Distant Lands ministries episode "Together Again" further expands on the Grand Finale of the main show by showing the souls of Finn and Jake reuniting and defeating the Lich for the final time in the afterlife before they reincarnate together for new adventures in another life.
• The Adventures of Sam & Max: Freelance Police ended with the duo defeating their Rogues Gallery, with Sam wondering worriedly now that they've dispatched their long-time nemeses, what are they going to do now. Max assures him not to worry, because there will always be a need for them and looks expectantly at the phone. Then waits some more nervously. Then he yells at the phone to ring, which it does, and Sam and Max are happy to know that their adventures continue. Then they fight each other to pick up the phone.
• The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin ends with Teddy, Grubby and Gimmick leaving Rillonia for the Land of Ying to seek out the remaining Illiops but Quellor vows to capture them and retrieve the crystals to throw Grundo into eternal darkness.
• The last episode of The Adventures of Tintin (1991) consisted of an adaptation of Tintin in America, the oldest comic not entirely dismissed by its author. This episode ends with Tintin receiving a phone call presumably informing him of a disaster he must investigate, then rushing out the door as the theme song plays.
• Amphibia final episode "The Hardest Thing" ends with Sprig and Ivy heading off to explore a newly discovered continent while Anne, Sasha and Marcy finally reunite back on Earth.
• Every episode of Animal Mechanicals ends with the Mechanicals facing a new task (varying from having some fun with whatever item they fixed to a whole new mission altogether).
• The Awesomes ends with the team about to fight off an Alien Invasion.
• Batman: The Brave and the Bold:
  • "Time Out For Justice!" ends with one of the twelve pieces of Equinox's mind destroyed. The other eleven are out there somewhere in time and space.
  • The series finale "Mitefall!" ends with the various characters attending a wrap party, with Batman assuring the audience that his fight for justice will continue.
• Ben 10:
  • The final episode of the original series, while non-canon to the sequels, ends with Ben's Secret Identity revealed to the world, Gwen transferring to his school, and Dr. Animo making a charge at them before class can begin. The narrator assures the viewer that unlike what Ben thought, going back to school was just a new beginning for him.
  • Ben 10: Secret of the Omnitrix: The real series finale in canonical order, it ends with the Tennysons going off to fight zombies at a mall.
• "Our quest begins." — tells us Toa Mata Nui at the end of BIONICLE: The Legend Reborn. A quest that involves traveling through a dangerous maze, dealing with ancient elemental warriors and finding an energy source for re-powering a dead Humongous Mecha and duking it out with another planet-sized robot that cast Mata Nui's people into slavery. A sequel was planned, but LEGO pulled the plug on Bionicle before the script could have been finalized.
• Bojack Horseman: The final episode plays with this, given how open ended it is for Bojack. He notes that he's vulnerable to falling to old habits again no matter how many times he gets sober. In essence, it finishes by alluding to the fact that Bojack will get into further shit later in his life, but for now the series has ended and the audience can fill in the blanks. This also ties into one of the show's themes of how life doesn't really have convenient, satisfying endings.
• Bravest Warriors ends with Chris and his father answering a distress call at the same time.
• Bucky O'Hare and the Toad Wars!: The TV show ends with Bucky and his crew freeing his home planet from the toads' control but the war has yet to be won.
• Captain Simian and the Space Monkeys ends with Lord Nebula defeated and Mandrax (actually the future self of Captain Simian) saying that the fate of the universe once again lies in the hands of Captain Simian. However, Rhesus-2 has decided to take over the universe himself, the Space Monkeys still haven't found their way back to Earth, and Captain Simian and Shao Lin still haven't admitted their feelings for each other.
• Carmen Sandiego: The last scene of the Season 4 finale "The Dark Red Caper" (the Grand Finale of the series) jumps ahead two years to show that Zack and Ivy have joined ACME and are working with Chase and Julia to hunt down the remaining V.I.L.E. operatives, with the occasional help of Carmen (or possibly whoever has taken her name).
• Centaurworld final episode "The Last Lullaby" ends with the herd traveling on the houseboat, knowing that whatever awaits them, they will face it together.
• ChalkZone ends with the song "Let's Go Wandering", in which Rudy, Penny and Snap leave in search of new lands within Chalkzone while their friends (and Skrawl) sadly wave goodbye.
• Chowder ends with Chowder taking over the kitchen with Panini, their children and an apprentice of his own.
• Class of the Titans ended like this; they managed to pull Theresa out of her Face–Heel Turn but Cronus is still out there and still has to be stopped.
• Cybersix ends with von Reichter dead and Cybersix implied to have survived but Jose is still around.
• Daria : Is It College Yet? ends with Jane and Daria getting together for a last pizza slice at Lawndale and discuss what college will be like.
• DuckTales (2017) "The Last Adventure!" ends with F.O.W.L. defeated and all of the characters looking forward to whatever adventures they will partake in in the future.
• The Dungeons & Dragons (1983) cartoon would've ended this way if the final episode had aired: the kids would've succeeded in purifying Venger and the Dungeon Master would've given them the choice of returning home or staying and having more adventures.
• Fangbone! ends with the effects of the World Chain making Earth and Skullbania so close to each other that portals to Skullbania now open at random, allowing monsters to slip through at any time and giving Fangbone and Bill continued reason to keep fighting even after Venomous Drool has been defeated.
• Flash Gordon (1996): The final scene shows the heroes still trapped in the alien dimension but confident that their loved ones will mount another rescue attempt in the near future. They then continue with their regular adventures while saying that things are looking interesting.
• Fluppy Dogs ends with the Fluppies reuniting with Jamie and Claire as dozens of other Fluppies come to explore Earth.
• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends ends with Bloo and the friends learning that Mac isn't moving away, meaning he'll still come to Foster's and they'll have more adventures. However, they'll have to do so with Cheese now living in the house.
• The fourth Futurama movie "Into the Wild Green Yonder" ends with the Planet Express crew (plus Scruffy, Kif, and LaBabara) being pursued by Zapp Brannigan. To escape him, they enter a wormhole, knowing that by doing so they'll become intergalactic fugitives and that the wormhole could take them trillion of light-years away, meaning they could never return to their homes. The gang accepts their fate and enters the wormhole...It would have ended on that note too, if it weren't for the revival.
• Generator Rex's finale stinger: After (almost) every EVO in the world has been cured, effectively completing Rex's original job permanently Rex and Six are called in against a giant robotic enemy.
  Rex: There'll always be something, won't there?
• The Ghost and Molly McGee ends with Scratch/Todd leaving Brighton but Molly still knows about ghosts and the afterlife, the position of the Chairman is still vacant, and while it isn't said outright, Geoff is implied to take Scratch's place in the McGee family.
• Gravity Falls final episode "Weirdmageddon Part 3: Take Back the Falls" ends with Dipper and Mabel going back home to their parents with the prospect of returning next summer and Stan and Ford traveling the world as paranormal investigators, leaving Soos to run the Mystery Shack. In addition, while Big Bad Bill Cipher was killed, playing his death screams backwards reveals the message "A-X-O-L-O-T-L! My time has come to burn! I invoke the ancient power that I may return!", implying that he could come back someday.
• Green Eggs and Ham: By way of The End... Or Is It? in the last episode of season one Anywhere. It looks like Sam and Guy are finally ready to put their whole crazy adventure behind them and enjoy some Green Eggs and Ham together... but wait! Sam recognizes the particular eggs he's eating as the kind his estranged mother used to make for him, and the two head off to the farm in East Flubria where they were bought to find answers.
• Green Lantern: The Animated Series ends with Hal Jordan and Kilowog continuing to protect Sector 2814 and Razer believing that Aya is still out there. As Razer flies out to find her, a Blue Lantern ring drifts into the frame.
• Hilda: The Wood Man's last line in Season 1 was convincing enough for viewers that Hilda's adventures are far from over, especially since Season 2 is around the corner.
  Wood Man: Not likely. Odds are...she'd do it again.
• Infinity Train: In the last episode of season three "The New Apex", Book 3 ends with Grace reorganizing the Apex so that everyone will be able to uncover the reasons why they're here and return home.
• Inhumanoids ends with Earth Corps dump their other jobs to resume protecting the world from the Inhumanoids.
• Justice League:
  • The original League's two-season run ended with the Watchtower destroyed and Hawkgirl resigning, but everyone else ready to pick up the pieces.
    Flash: What's gonna happen to the League now? Do we all just walk away?
    Martian Manhunter: No. We rebuild — starting today.
  • Unlimited ends with the quote above, as the League gets ready to chase down and arrest the Legion of Doom, whom they just gave a five-minute head start because of their help against the forces of Apokolips. As if it isn't clear enough, it is followed by what is essentially an animated superhero curtain call, set to the epic Unlimited's theme.
• King of the Hill ends with Bobby picking up the last steak of the barbecue but Hank assures him he'll be grilling his whole life.
• The Legend of Korra ends with the final threat to world peace that we know of being defeated, creating a new spirit portal in the process, but Korra saying that there are still so many other things out there for her to learn and experience. However, she and Asami decide they both need a break, so they head out through the spirit portal to take a vacation together. The series ends with Asami and Korra beginning a romantic relationship as they enter the spirit world.
• The Lion Guard ends with Kion and friends relinquishing their posts to Vitani and her own Guard, but now they are going to keep defending the Tree of Life with the Night Pride.
• Loonatics Unleashed: After General Deuce is defeated, Zadavia and Optimatus plan to return to their home planet and the Loonatics plan to stay on Blanc, where they can use the wormhole trains to go anywhere in the galaxy. Xadavia then tells them they've graduated from guardians of Acmetropolis to guardians of the galaxy.
• The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack ends with Flapjack, K'nuckles and Bubbie (who have become live-action characters) leaving Stormalong Harbor in search of more adventures somewhere else.
• Megas XLR ends on this note. Coop manages to take down his evil counterpart and strand him and Evil Kiva in a Sugar Bowl dimension. The Glorft commander, Gorrath, calls for a temporary ceasefire, though he still intends on retrieving Megas. Coop now has a new model of said warbot, and the series ends with him testing out all the new weaponry.
• The Midnight Gospel ends with Clancy boarding a bus that carries him off towards a vast nexus of eldritch pathways, having either escaped into simulated reality full-time or died.
• Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series ends with the Ducks preventing Lord Dragaunus from freeing the rest of his army, at the cost of destroying the machine that would've let them return to Puckworld, and winning the game that lets them move on to the Stanley Cup. However, the Saurians are down, but not out.
• Mighty Max's final scene appears to be a massive Reset Button until Max picks up the Cap and reads the summons Virgil sent him, reminding him not to take so long this time. Max realizes they have another chance, and this time things will be different.
• Zigzagged in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic with the last three episodes. The first two end with every major villain defeated but also with Twilight Sparkle ascending to the throne to set the stage for a whole new slew of adventures and stories. The very final episode is a Distant Finale that shows the outcome of these stories, with hints of events like the Young Six and Princess Flurry Heart's adventures, Gallus having joined the Royal Guard, and a number of characters having married and had children, with the actual events that led to these outcomes being left to the viewer's imaginations. The Expanded Universe is set to depict some of these events, however. The final moments of the finale still play this straight though, with Twilight sending her student, Luster Dawn, to Ponyville to learn how to make friends just like how she was, and she and her friends watch Luster head out with her new group of friends with the implications this new group will soon have their own adventures too.
• Mysticons ends with the Spectral Hand destroyed for good, along with the fragment of Necrafa's mask, and the Vexicons (save Eartha, who had a Heel–Face Turn) imprisoned, but the narration makes it clear that the Mysticon's adventures are far from over, especially since Kymraw and Tazma are still out there.
• OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes: KO makes peace with his alter ego TKO, and the Grand Finale "Thank You For Watching This Show" displays the adventures he and the other cast members will continue to have even after the show's end.
• The Owl House ends with Luz starting college as peace has been restored to the Boiling Isles for years; with new forms of magic flourishing after the defeat of the emperor.
• Party Wagon: Another map, another treasure hunt, this time out in California. And Three Eyed Jack is still on the loose.
• Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja ends with Randy finally defeating the Sorcerer but the Creep states that his greatest battle is just around the bend.
• Recess: Taking the Fifth Grade ends with T.J. telling the audience that the fifth grade year is going to be their best year yet, right before the movie ends. This was also the "true" ending to the series.
• Robotix ends with the Terrastar destroyed and the humans deciding to stay on Skalorr so they can help the Protectons rebuild. However, Nemesis is still online...
• The last episode of the final Rocky and Bullwinkle story arc ("Moosylvania Saved") ends with the title heroes addressing the viewers after the narrator says to watch for the next adventure:
  Bullwinkle: It may be a little hard to find, but don't give up.
  Rocky: We're not!
• When Scooby-Doo and the gang defeat the Nibiru Entity in the finale of Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, it creates an alternate timeline in their town of Crystal Cove in which the Nibiru entity and the teams of past mystery solvers never existed, and everyone in town is happier due to not being influenced by the evil. Even the Big Bad Professor Pericles gets a new lease on life. However, the gang now have normal happy teenage lives and there seem to be no more mysteries to solve. At least until they get a message saying there will always be mysteries that need solving and that they've been accepted to a university on the other side of the country, leading to them going on a road trip. In essence, the series ends where Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! begins.
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: after Horde Prime's defeat, Adora wants to bring magic back to the universe and wants her friends to come along with her, and they all naturally agree.
• Sidekick ends with Eric accidentally destroying everyone's diplomas, forcing them to repeat Sidekick Academy all over again.
• Skeleton Warriors ends with Baron Dark defeated but the Steeles now have to clean up the mess left by the war and Dark's army is still out there.
• Sonic Prime: The series ends with Green Hill being restored and the Paradox Prism being kept out of Eggman's hands forever. Just as Sonic was about to chow down with his friends, some new danger emerges, forcing them back into action.
• South Park: In the episode "Make Love Not Warcraft" a griefer keeps killing other players' characters. The boys spend weeks Level Grinding so that they can pose a challenge to him. After they win their long battle, Stan wonders what they will do next. Cartman reminds him they can now play the game.
• Star vs. the Forces of Evil ends with Mina's army being depowered but Mina is still out there and says that her ideals will never die. Earth and Mewni end up merged as Star and Marco reunite and it's implied it's going to take a long time for everyone to get used to this.
• Star Wars Rebels: The finale, taking place sometime after the war, has Sabine and Ahsoka off to find Ezra.
• Static Shock ends with all the Bang Babies being cured but Gear promises to find a way to prevent him and Static from being affected so they can keep being heroes.
• Steven Universe: Future ends with Steven leaving Beach City to continue his life while traveling across the country to visit every state before deciding where he wants to settle.
• Storm Hawks ends this way, with the war over, except that the heroes have departed to the Far Side in pursuit of Master Cyclonis. The final scene gives us a glimpse of the Far Side and the Storm Hawks' awe-struck reactions before Aerrow simply grins and says: "This is gonna be fun."
• Sumo Mouse ends with Sumo Mouse saving Catropolis from destruction but Nadia still wants to take it over while Claw swears that he'll be back.
• Sym-Bionic Titan ends with Octus repaired and Titan reformed but Modula still needs to be stopped.
• Teen Titans (2003) does this twice in its last two episodes, with very different contexts:
  • The final season arc ends with Dr. Light having the bad luck to be out doing villainy while the entire Titans roster happens to be in town. The episode ends right before one massively unfair beatdown commences.
    Cyborg: Maybe we oughta show him who he's up against!
    Raven: He's totally gonna freak this time.
    Robin: Titans, Go!
  • The last episode itself has the Titans repeatedly clash with some sort of elementally-metamorphic robot, while Beast Boy's distracted by the apparent return of Terra, who insists she's just a regular girl who doesn't know him. Neither of these issues really gets a resolution, as BB decides to leave her be and join his friends in fighting the good fight once again.
    Beast Boy: Beast Boy to Robin. I'm on my way. (runs into the light)
• ThunderCats (1985): In the final scene, the other ThunderCats remind Lion-O that they may have saved the day, but there will always be evil. The best they can do is remain vigilant, stay true to themselves, and continue to spread the Code of Thundera: Justice, Truth, Honor, Loyalty.
• The majority of Transformers series end this way. One major theme in every series is that the battle between Autobots and Decepticons is the Forever War, raging since ancient times (and when you’re from a race of nigh-immortal robots who considers four million years to be young, the standard for ‘ancient times’ is pretty high!) Your usual three-season-long window into this eternal conflict almost never sees its permanent end. A TF series finale might have Megatron’s big final plot defeated but he escapes, or is only imprisoned (which is seldom final for supervillains). If he’s actually destroyed with no hint at survival, enough major ‘Cons to continue in his stead will remain alive and free. Or, the final conflict of the series will be with a Greater-Scope Villain or Outside-Context Problem, leaving the usual villains to pick up where they left off after its defeat. No less than four series have ended with the big victory for the Autobots being the restoration of their home planet Cybertron after ages of war had left it dead or dying — and all four made it clear that some of the baddies are still out there.
  Optimus: You don’t have to fight anymore.
  Cerebros: But what of the Decepticons?
  Optimus: There may always be Decepticons, but I have a different task for you.
• Twelve Forever ends with the trio managing to defeat the Butt Witch, depowering her back to a smaller than normal form which Big Deal takes away. The three make up and celebrate Todd's birthday back in the real world along with Gwen with the implication Reggie will tell her about Endless when she asks about Reggie's arm. All the while Reggie's key glows, causing a flash to appear in the ocean near Endless Island. What it is (a new key, an island, another newcomer, etc) is left up to the imagination.
• Victor and Valentino ends with the defeat of the Big Bad Tez; and while Vic and Val's summer with their grandmother may be over, it's clear there's much more to be discovered across their homeland.
• Wander over Yonder ends with things returning to normal after Lord Dominator's defeat; Wander and Sylvia set off to explore the rejuvenated galaxy while Lord Hater renews his vow to conquer it.
• World of Quest ends with the five swords being lost, forcing Nestor, Quest and the others to find them again.
• Xiaolin Showdown ends with Raimundo being made Xiaolin Leader and every member of the monks Rogues Gallery standing outside the temple, ready for another battle. The monks happily charge forward, and it's almost certain they'll win again.
• Yin Yang Yo! ends with Yin and Yang asking Yo (who's been revealed to be their father) about their mother but are interrupted by the arrival of a new villain, whom they proceed to fight.
• Young Justice also uses this regularly, as no matter the season, there will always be more villains and problems to face in the future.
• The first season of Zak Storm ends with Golden Bones, the second-in-command of the season's Big Bad, being dragged into a portal the characters originally believed would bring them back home by a giant tentacle of a sea monster. Due to this, the characters realize that there is actually an eighth sea they have to brave in order to return home after all.

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This page may have reached its end at last, but the creativity of mankind lives on.
And as long as fiction exists... so will those who observe and analyze it.
This Troper will return.