A common practice in many forms of media is to roll the credits list after the story is told as a way of closure, The Stinger notwithstanding. However, some works go beyond that practice and roll the credits before the climax or Final Boss fight takes place.
This trope is usually played straight that way for all forms of media, but it also comes in other variations for videogames:
- Any time the New Game Plus is incorporated as part of the story rather than a bonus.
- For games that implement Another Side, Another Story, whenever there's a True Final Boss it's only unlocked via completion of all other characters' respective stories.
- For games that implement Easy-Mode Mockery, preventing the player from playing the final levels unless they choose the higher difficulty settings.
In all cases, the key part of the trope is that the credits (or a part of them) must roll in any fashion before any kind of climax takes place. If the work, instead of a credits roll or a proper ending just features something else that can be confused with an ending signal, that's a pre-ending form of A Winner Is You. If the credits roll at the very beginning, without any kind of action taking place priorhand, though there's definitely overlap, that's a Title Sequence.
Compare Bait-and-Switch Credits, Creative Closing Credits, Credits Gag, Fake-Out Fade-Out, and To Be Continued... Right Now all of which can have some overlap with this trope.
This trope is subjected to Spoilers Off as an Ending Trope, so all spoilers are left unmarked. Proceed with caution. You Have Been Warned.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- The End of Evangelion has the credits in the middle, between the two episodes that make up the movie.
- The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You: In Episode 8, Nano catches Rentarou in a broom closet, where she proceeds to kiss Rentarou continuously as credits start rolling. The scene is interrupted by Kusuri showing up with the antidote to the kissing zombie drug in Nano's system.
Film
- It was common practice for motion pictures before the 1970s to list all the credits at the beginning before any action took place. By the end of the 1970s, almost all films had shifted all but the most important credits to after the ending.
- A notable modern-day exception, where all of the credits are shown before the film even starts, is 2009's Enter the Void.
- Everything Everywhere All at Once: The film begins to roll the credits after Evelyn appears to die. However, it turns out that when Evelyn appeared to die, we were watching another version of the film that exists in an Alternate Universe where Evelyn is an actress and her character is The Danza. The film then continues from Evelyn's perspective.
Live-Action TV
- Monty Python's Flying Circus plays this for laughs in several episodes.
- "How Not to be Seen": After the end credits roll, the entire episode is re-shown at very high speed before it actually ends.
- "Michael Ellis": The end credits run right after the usual Title Sequence plays.
- "The All-England Summarize Proust Competition": The end credits run right after that sketch ends.
- "The Golden Age of Ballooning": The end credits run at the end of that sketch, about halfway through the episode.
- Several episodes of Screenwipe had the credits run at the start or middle of the show, as Charlie Brooker's pushback against Credits Pushback.
Video Games
- A Running Gag in the Banjo-Kazooie games is to roll the credits after Grunty's plan has seemingly been stopped, only to then reveal that you still need to face her in the Final Battle.
- Bayonetta: Following the defeat of Jubileus, it appears as though Bayonetta is fated to burn up in Earth's atmosphere alongside the remains of the boss, and the credits begin to roll..... only for the music to suddenly stop as Jeanne stomps the credits, leading to a Post-Final Boss where the witches need to smash Jubileus's remains before they wreck Earth.
- Borderlands:
- At the end of the Borderlands DLC The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned, after defeating Dr. Ned's first form the game goes to the credits roll... which are suddenly shredded by Ned's second form, Undead Ned, and the player is prompted to drop off from Ned's building all the way down to a cave where the second phase of the fight begins.
- In Tales from the Borderlands and New Tales from the Borderlands, the credits roll montage happens at the middle of every chapter, including the final chapter.
- Exaggerated in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which has an opening credits sequence after the completion of the first level.
- Exaggerated in Final Fantasy, where the credits appear the first time the bridge of Corneria is crossed.
- Furi plays its end credits after The Stranger successfully escapes his prison, but before he makes his way to The Star and chooses between allowing them to assimilate the Free World or rebelling against them, the latter of which sets off the True Final Boss fight.
- Inverted in Half-Minute Hero, which has credits after every level.
- Downplayed in Haven (2020), as a partial credits roll plays out while Kay and Yu make their way to the base of Source's flow bridge in order to sever it, but the full credits only play out at the very end of the story.
- Kid Icarus: Uprising has some retro-styled credits roll after defeating Medusa, only for Hades to literally rip through them and announce his presence. You're not even halfway through the game at this point.
- Killer Instinct is subjected to Easy-Mode Mockery, so players are allowed to play all the way until Fulgore in the lower difficulty settings, after which the credits roll. In order to fight against Eyedol, the player must defeat Fulgore in a higher-difficulty setting.
- In Kirby Star Allies, the credits roll at high speed after defeating Macho Dedede; but since the main threat is still at large, cue the credits rewinding just as quickly. Fittingly, the music tracks played in both scenes are named "Sudden Happy Ending" and "Things Seldom Go Right..." in the original Soundtrack.
- Inverted in some of the Lego Adaptation Games, where the Credits Roll run after completion of each episode. They trigger every time the last level of that episode is beaten, at least in story mode.
- Inverted and Justified in Live A Live, where every chapter has ending credits and they're the credits for those specific chapters, not the whole game's credits.
- Monster Hunter: Rise:
- The game rolls the credits after you successfully hunt a Magnamalo (the game's flagship monster) for the first time; gameplay-wise, this marks the barrier between Low and High-Rank Hunts.
- The credits roll again after the first fight against Thunder Serpent Narwa, which serves as the wall between the first half of high rank and the second, though it's Hand Waved, as Rise had a Troubled Production and the True Final Boss of High Rank, Narwa the All-Mother, wasn't complete in time for the game's 1.0 release.
- Endings A and B mark the first half of NieR: Automata and receive the end credits all the same, though the credits music is in a different language each time. The joke endings also get in on the action, but it zips through the credits on fast forward.
- Pikmin: Both 2 and 4 are divided up into two "parts," where the credits only roll when the player finishes the first part:
- Pikmin 2: The first part is about Olimar and Louie trying to collect treasure in order to pay off a debt of 10,000 pokos. Once the debt is paid, they return back home, and the credits roll. However, said credits show that Louie was left behind during the takeoff, so now it's up to Olimar and the President to try to find Louie for the second part, as well as collect the rest of the treasure while they're at it.
- Pikmin 4: The first part is about the Rescue Corp trying to rescue Olimar as well as collect treasure to get enough sparklium to power the S.S. Beagle in order to get home. Once Olimar is rescued and cured of being a leafling, the Rescue Corp and Olimar travel home and the credits roll, but they show that Louie has tamed Moss, hinting more to come. Indeed, right after the credits, it's revealed that, somewhere along the lines, Oatchi has mutated and now has a leaf on his tail like Moss. This means that he cannot leave PNF-404 without getting horribly sick. The second part is then about trying to find a cure for Oatchi and rescuing the remaining castaways as well as collecting the rest of the treasure.
- Exaggerated in Plants Versus Zombies, which rolls the credits after the first adventure campaign is cleared. After that players get the second campaign, all the minigames, the zen garden, gathering money to buy all the extra plants, and so on...
- Pokémon:
- In the main games, beating the Elite Four will cause the credits to roll and the New Game Plus to be unlocked, but from Pokémon Black and White onwards, there's still a lot more to be done (story-wise) after that.
- Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky has credits after the Disc-One Final Boss and at the end of every special episode (special episodes are Another Side, Another Story missions) but NOT after the True Final Boss.
- In Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage, after the player defeats Carnage and his family, a cutscene will play where Spider-Man confronts an angry Venom and the credits start to play. However, part way through, an Evil Laugh echoes and the credits race upwards as Carnage surfaces in the nearby lake, kicking off the two-part Final Boss.
- Exaggerated in Tom Mason's Dinosaurs For Hire: Upon completing the prelude level, the credits come up as if it's the end of the game, though it only shows the studio that developed the game and the programmers before the credits were quickly retracted to the bottom of the screen and the following text shows up: "Whoa! Slight problem with your Genesis' Blast Processing Unit! Psych!!!"
- WWE '12: Road to Wrestlemania rolls the credits after the player's custom wrestler loses his WrestleMania match. Shortly into the credits, they get interrupted by Kevin Nash, who has now performed a Hostile Show Takeover, WWE being replaced by a revived WCW, leading into the final stretch of the story, which entails reversing said takeover.
- Inverted in The Witch and the Hundred Knight rolls the game's credits after the end of each chapter.
- Wolfenstein: The New Order is another exaggeration. The game rolls its credits after B.J. and either Wyatt or Fergus survive 1946, right after B.J. chooses which soldier to sacrifice to Deathshead. If no choice is taken, all three of them are executed and the game outputs a Non-Standard Game Over.
Visual Novels
- This happens about half-way through Da Capo II. Once you reach the Winter Holidays, they play a montage accompanied by credits.
- In Princess Waltz, a little less than halfway through the game, one of the main characters dies, "BAD END" is displayed, and the credits roll. This is especially odd because there were literally no choices up to that point; so it's completely unavoidable. But once players reach the title screen, "Chapter Two" appears, and players can continue the game.
Western Animation
- Gemusetto: Machu Pichu has six parts, with the credits rolling at the end of part five (which has a video of the show's creator as a stinger).
