Uncertain Doom / Live-Action Films

• Abominable: Karen is found alive in a cave by Zeigler but with part of her stomach gone, looking like it was bitten off and eaten. She is dragged deeper into the cave with a scream, where she presumably (although not explicitly) is finished off or dies of her wounds.
• Aftersun: Given Calum's obvious struggles with depression and self-loathing, dissatisfaction with his life, his comment about how he's not going to live to forty, and his lack of presence in Sophie's adult life, it's heavily implied that he eventually committed suicide, though nothing is ever stated.
• Alexander Nevsky does not ultimately show the fate of the German Bishop. He is last seen lying down on the ice before it starts breaking and drowning the Teutonic Knights. As he is not seen with the arrested leaders afterwards, it can be assumed he drowned along with the majority of the knights.
• Often played with Barnaby in the Babes in Toyland films. In the live action Disney film, he is stabbed by Tom and falls from a great height into an open toybox, from which he never emerges. The only reason this is debated is because publicity stills show him being forced into a birdcage and imprisoned in it; however, this happens in place of the stabbing in this version, so it is a Revised Ending. In the animated film, Barnaby Crookedman is last seen being chased by goblins as revenge for insulting their king shortly after his death.
• Balibo: Joao chooses to remain in Dili while his family flees to the mountains, knowing it will soon be the sight of the Indonesian invasion. His fate is left ambiguous, though given how the TNI repeatedly executes civilians it's likely he was killed.
• Batman & Robin ends with Mr. Freeze being assigned to be Poison Ivy's cellmate, with full knowledge of her betrayal and attempting to kill his wife. He subsequently threatens to make her life a living hell and asks her to "Prepare for a bitter harvest. Winter has come at last." — whether or not his idea of revenge was killing her remains unanswered.
• Big Game: Some of the Air Force One crew members. Several bodies are with the plane in the lake, but it's possible that some of them survive and just swam ashore before Moore and Oskari arrived, given the amount of time between the crash and them reaching the wreck.
• Blade Runner 2049 ends with K bringing Deckard to Dr. Ana Stelline's lab after rescuing him from Wallace's men as led by Luv, having sustained numerous stab wounds during his fight with the gynoid. As Deckard enters the lab, K lies down on the snow-covered steps, noting that he in fact is bleeding out. The movie ends before anything further is seen of his fate, but it should be noted that "Tears in Rain" plays during the last shots we see of K.
• Brewster McCloud: Officer Johnson accepts a ride from the sinister Suzanne while seeking to arrest her Protectorate Brewster and a bird poops on him as he gets into her car, just like birds pooped on each strangling victim before their murder, but his body never is shown being discovered, leaving his fate ambiguous.
• Carrie (1976): Most of the Mauve Shirt classmates of Carrie such as George and the Wilson sisters aren’t seen dying on screen in the chaos at the gym but would have a hard time escaping from the burning gym after she blocked the door.
• Carrie (2002): Some of various electrocuted prom goers (who include Helen, Roy and Principal Morton) could have survived, given how it's later mentioned that about elven people survived and only five or so were seen escaping through the vents before the floor was electrocuted.
• Casino Royale (2006): Kratt, Valencia and a couple of Le Chiffre’s other henchmen wait outside while he tortures Bond and Vesper. A few minutes later there’s some shots and a scream from outside before Mr. White barges in to kill Le Chiffre but no bodies are shown.
• Charade: Walter Matthau's character falls one story through a theater trap door. It's been debated pretty heavily exactly what the effect of that was to his body in terms of death or being knocked out.
• Circle: Practically the whole cast, as the movie has the dwindling cast be subjected to seemingly fatal electric shocks one by one every few minutes but then dragged from the room before their bodies can be examined.
• The Dark Knight:
  • As far as The Joker is concerned due to Heath Ledger's premature death: Is The Joker doing time in a federal prison for his infamous crimes, or did that guy on the SWAT team that cornered him decide they'd had enough of his antics and put a bullet between his eyes? It'll remain unanswered.
  • Averted with the novels; the novelization of The Dark Knight Rises includes a passing mention the Joker and implies he's either serving life sentence in a padded cell at Arkham or has broken out and slipped off the radar, though not even Selina Kyle knows where he really is.
  • This is Maroni's fate after Harvey Dent shot his driver, causing the car to crash in the yards outside Chicago Union Station. Even the novelization doesn't mention anyone's death except for the driver's, meaning Maroni probably could've survived but was knocked into a coma.
• Daylight's End: During the final battle at the police station, Bishop is last seen cornered in a closet and blazing away at an enormous charging horde, while Frank is tackled by a zombie after running out of bullets. Neither of them is seen being killed, but their odds aren't good and they aren't seen with the other survivors at the end.
• Diamonds Are Forever: Wint and Kidd are set on fire but land in the ocean.
• Drive (2011): The lead character is stabbed in the chest and nearly disemboweled by the Big Bad near the end of the film. The last time we see the Driver, he stirs (after initially appearing to be dead) and drives off, but it is left unclear whether he'll survive his injuries or not.
• The main character of Event Horizon gets sucked into a Hell dimension along with the titular haunted spaceship as part of it is exploding.
• The ending of Ex Machina sees Caleb trapped inside of Nathan's facility as Ava escapes without him, the ultimate test of her abilities. While the film doesn't show anything one way or the other, Caleb's hundreds of miles from help with no one coming to look for him, in a facility without any power. The most the audience gets to see is Caleb trying and failing to break down a window with a chair.
• Face/Off: Deitrich's crony Aldo and escort Livia are both shot in the penthouse shootout, but Livia is still conscious and clutching her stomach after being shot and Aldo remains standing as the camera cuts away, leaving their fates slightly ambiguous.
• The Fast and the Furious:
  • The entire plot of F9 is triggered by a video message Mr. Nobody sent the heroes when his plane crashed. When they race to the crash site, they find the first half of Project Ares, but Mr. Nobody is nowhere to be found and never comes back again. It's currently unknown whether he died in the crash or escaped and went missing, as his current whereabouts are unknown.
  • Fast X ends with Dante starting the Magic Countdown to blow up the dam to kill Dom and his son, but the camera fades to black before we see the result. A few minutes earlier, the plane Roman, Tej, Han and Ramsey took to rescue Dom was shot down by Aimes, The Dragon to Dante, but the crash happened offscreen with no confirmation of their survival.
• Fearless (1993): Since not all of the survivors are among the people who Max gets out of the plane and through the cornfield, and not every survivor attends the group meeting, it is unclear whether some of the people from the plane flashbacks (the pilots, the cabin stewardess, a woman and her daughter, a couple praying right before the crash, etc.) survive.
• Flash Gordon:
  • Ming the Merciless is impaled, and disintegrates himself with his ring. However, the final scene shows a hand picking up the ring, with an evil laugh. It is unclear whether this is Ming or someone else entirely; however, it does not look like Ming's hand.
  • Munson, Dr. Zarkov's assistant seen during the start, has an uncertain fate. He's shown trying to flee Flash and Dale's crashing airplane but is presumably killed during the plane's impact. Even if he was simply knocked out, the ignition of Zarkov's rocket afterwards is shown setting the house aglow with flames. This probably set the whole house on fire, burning Munson whether he was dead or alive.
• Friday the 13th (2009): Despite being impaled, Jenna is still alive, with her eyes open and making sounds before dropping to the ground as Jason steps over the body and Clay and Whitney have to flee.
• Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019): The canonical fate of Admiral Stenz. He disappears from the finished film after Colonel Foster plans the Washington DC attack on King Ghidorah, but an extra scene in the novelization hints at his death, when the Argo crew receiving a transmission from his submarine which shows it's flooding and is on fire before the transmission cuts out. This is based on a more explicit Deleted Scene from the film, where Stenz confirms his sub is going down and is apparently Killed Mid-Sentence by an explosion.
• Harry Potter:
  • In the Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, after Barty Crouch Jr. is captured, his final fate is never revealed. Dumbledore implies that he will be sent back to Azkaban, but Crouch Jr. never appears alongside other Death Eaters in subsequent films. It is assumed by most fans that he suffered a Dementor's Kiss, like in the books. Alternatively, he could've been killed offscreen in some other way. It should be noted that Cornelius Fudge wanted anybody who claimed Voldemort was back eliminated, thus making Barty's death even more possible. That said, his final fate is never revealed in the films.
  • It's never been stated what happened to the real Percival Graves in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Given that it was Grindelwald who was impersonating him and he did it by using transfiguration and not polyjuice potion, it’s hard to imagine he’s alive somewhere.
  • It's ambiguous whether or not Credence/Aurelius survives Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore. It's acknowledged by everyone that there is nothing that can be done to save him after being poisoned by the obscurus parasite for about thirty years. His aunt Ariana Dumbledore is the only other known Obscurial who even made it past the age of ten. His uncle admits that all that can be done is ease the pain of his inevitable death and make the most of the time he's got left. He's taken home by his father to die but there's no confirmation by the end of the film if it's happened or not.
• Hello Mary-Lou: Prom Night II: Kelly, who is stabbed in the stomach by a falling decoration during the prom, but still seems to be stirring a little as the film cuts away from her, and might not have been stabbed too deeply. During the final scene, after the police and ambulances arrive, there's only one body bag in the background, which isn't hers due to the body inside lacking breast curves.
• Holidays: It's unclear what Carol's fate in Father's Day is. She most probably was killed, but nothing is seen exactly.
• Jack Frost (1997):
  • Jill is last seen having been raped with a mutant snowman's carrot and lying on the ground, bleeding from the mouth.
  • Joe and Marla in the sequel, who hide from Jack inside a freezer, with the ending scene showing that no one has found them to let them out yet, but with a little ambiguity about whether they're dead.
• Justice League (2017): Steppenwolf's Parademons turn on and start feasting on him, but a Boom Tube teleports him and them away so he may have survived, albeit likely badly injured. That said, Darkseid tends not to take failure well.
• Key Largo: Ralph is knocked off the boat in the climax and is last heard screaming for help as it speeds away. He probably drowns afterward, but there's a slight chance he might have swam to safety.
• Kill Bill: In Volume 2, after having her remaining eye ripped out by the Bride, Elle Driver is left screaming and thrashing in a trailer in a middle of a desert....with a loose, aggressive, and deadly venomous black mamba snake presumably slithering around somewhere inside. The film's end credits depict the names of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad as being crossed off a hit list, with the exception of Elle's, which displays a question mark, leaving her ultimate fate unknown.
• Kingdom of Heaven: The Grand Master of the Templar Order, who often accompanied Raynald de Chatillon during his massacres of Muslim caravans, is last seen marching with other crusaders against Saladin and his army. Because all the crusaders start dying of thirst and exhaustion, their army is annihilated and Raynald and Guy de Lusignan are taken captive. It is unclear if the Grand Master died with crusaders, as he was not seen being taken captive as well. The historical Grand Master was Gerard de Rideford and he did survive the battle and was simply taken prisoner... but the movie takes enough liberties with what actually happened that there's room for doubt as to whether that's the case here.
• Last Night in Soho: The last we see of The Silver-Haired Gentleman, who has served as a Creepy Red Herring throughout the story, is when he is run over by a car. While he doesn't look to be in good shape, an ambulance arrives soon after. The movie never confirms whether he survives.
• One of the students in Lean on Me was a criminal who quits school. He is told by Joe Clark that he will be dead in a year. He says he'll take his chances and he is never heard from again.
• The Lord of the Rings:
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring: The Watcher in the Water after it goes after the fellowship. We see that it tears down the gates, trapping the fellowship in Moria. It isn't clear if the stones crushed it or if it merely stayed in the lake after trapping the fellowship.
  • The theatrical cut of The Return of the King does not show Gothmog's ultimate fate. He is last seen at the front of his army as the Riders of Rohan charge them, which heavily implies he did not survive their charge but leaves open the possibility that he survived. The Extended Edition shows his ultimate fate (though it was much later than theatrical version made us believe).
  • The Hobbit: Thráin disappears without explanation sometime after Smaug's attack on Dale. Averted in a deleted scene from The Desolation of Smaug, where we learn Thráin was captured by Sauron; Gandalf finds him shortly before he dies.
• Mad Max: Fury Road: During the first chase, Ace is knocked off the war rig and onto the desert floor at an angle that makes it hard to tell whether the war rig's tires kill him, only injure him, or miss him entirely. Whether he survives the fall is unclear, but he never shows up later.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Avengers: Infinity War may have the most expansive example of this trope ever for the franchise. Thanks to Thanos' Badass Fingersnap, half of the universe is dead. While a few characters in both this movie and Ant-Man and the Wasp have been seen disintegrating and Word of God has confirmed several characters who either survived or got killed by the snap, the fates of the rest of the MCU cast are uncertain. One year later, with the release of Avengers: Endgame, the half of the universe that Thanos snapped away were brought back, making the most expansive aversion.
  • Infinity War also has Thanos attack Xandar and Knowhere offscreen, and only the final scenes of the attack on the Statesman are shown. This left the fates of Irani Rael (Nova Prime), Rhomann Dey, the Collector, Cosmo the Spacedog, Howard the Duck, Valkyrie, Korg, and Miek uncertain. The latter four were shown alive in Endgame; Cosmo was seen in The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, which also confirmed that the Collector survived; Rael and Dey's fates remain unconfirmed.
  • Ant-Man and the Wasp has a single example that's even more uncertain. Ghost, the movie's Anti-Villain. It was never confirmed or denied if she was snapped away by Thanos, but there's another factor to her uncertainty. Her very existence is unstable on the quantum level, and while the heroes can supply her with the quantum healing energy to stabilize her, everyone qualified to get that was either killed by Thanos or left stranded in the quantum realm for five years. If she was spared by Thanos's fingersnap, it's unknown if she could last five years without the quantum healing energy needed to stabilize her.^note She's set to appear in Thunderbolts.
  • Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, after Wanda realizes the error of her ways, she uses her powers to bring down Mount Wundagore. Not only does Wanda destroy all copies of the Darkhold, but she seemingly sacrifices herself. It is currently unknown if Wanda truly is dead.
  • Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania ends with Kang being dragged into his ship's power source, and several characters state their uncertainty about whether or not he survived.
• In Navajo Joe, the title character is shot twice by the villain, Duncan, during the final confrontation. While he does kill Duncan (with a well-timed tomahawk to the head), the last we see of Joe is him sitting on a hill, grimacing in pain and looking at all the death that's been caused in the burial ground. The final scene of the film has Estella send Joe's horse (who has returned with the missing money) back into the frontier to find him, with his final fate left ambiguous.
• Nurse Betty: Joyce and Merl are last seen being roughed up by Wesley and Charlie for information, and it is unknown if the hitmen spared them or not.
• Near the end of Night of the Living Dead (1968), Barbara is dragged out of the house by a group of zombies which includes her brother, Johnny, presumably to be Devoured by the Horde, but she is never actually seen dying or even being bitten (which in the Romero-verse is always fatal). Various non-canon spin-offs have thus had her survive the event through various means; in one Johnny himself was not actually a zombie and rescued her, while in another the zombified Johnny showed a hint of remembering his old life and pulled her to safety away from the rest of the horde.
• Parasite (2019): Da-song has a seizure during the climax, with his mother having said regarding an earlier one that he would've died unless he was given treatment within 15 minutes. Whether or not he was treated in time remains unrevealed.
• Picnic at Hanging Rock deliberately leaves the ultimate fate of the missing schoolgirls and their teacher a mystery, with only few and contradictory clues. Although one of them is found bruised but alive after a week in the wild, she has no memory of what happened to her or the others.
• Piggy (2022): Sara's parents are last seen bleeding on the floor after the stranger attacks them. Their wounds don't appear to be fatal but their ultimate fate is left ambiguous.
• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End has this with some crewmembers of the Flying Dutchman. While the majority of the crew regains their humanity and perform a Heel–Face Turn once Davy Jones is dead, there were some who fell into the Maelstrom (examples are Clanker, Hadras, and at least two others) and one (Morey) who got decapitated by Barbossa. But knowing the nature of the Flying Dutchman crew, there is a chance they survived. It should be noted though, that none of them were seen when Will Turner was being made into the ship's new Captain.
• The HBO movie Rasputin Dark Servant Of Destiny (the one starring Alan Rickman) ends with the Romanov family massacred by the Bolshevik uprising. However, the movie ends just before Alexei and Anastasia are shot, leaving their fates ambiguous. This is a reference not just to the Did Anastasia Survive? conspiracy theory, but also to the fact that Alexei and at least one of his sisters were indeed missing from the mass grave shared by the rest of the family, and it was thought that they might have escaped somehow. Years after the movie came out, their bodies would be found not far from where the rest of the Romanovs were buried.
• Red Dawn (1984): Jed and Matt Eckert are both suffering from gunshot wounds to the chest, and just sit down on a park bench, unable to go any further at the end. It is implied (although not completely explicit) that they die from their wounds, and even if they didn't, they're in the middle of Soviet-occupied territory and facing possible execution if captured.
• The Rock: Mook Lieutenant Captain Hendrix is dropped into a pool of water from a height that probably wasn't enough to avert Soft Water to fatal degrees, and while he does seem to be floating in it dead or unconscious, it was just a few seconds after the drop and he might have recovered from that.
• Rollercoaster: It is never revealed whether the people who get the most focus while riding the rollercoaster that derails survive or not, save for two people whose car lands upside down, crushing everyone inside.
• Runaway Jury: Jacob's secretary is last seen hiding near him, trying to call the police. While the gunman almost certainly shoots her right after Jacob, it's unclear if she's one of the eleven fatalities or is only wounded.
• Scream 3: Jennifer. Ghostface striking a killing blow isn't shown (she was alive and fighting back just a couple seconds earlier), and she seems to scream right as he throws her through the mirror. Afterwards she's seen lying on the ground, apparently dead, with some blood on her face, but she might have just been cut and knocked unconscious from being tossed through the glass door and the others don't explicitly refer to her as being dead in the aftermath.
• Scream 4: Kirby who is stabbed in the stomach and left to bleed out, but is still alive and conscious when last seen, causing many fans to theorize that she might have managed to crawl away and survive. Scream (2022) confirms that she did, in fact, survive.
• During the second heist in Set It Off, there were police blocking the girls' getaway car. Cleo had to steal another car. She approached the driver with guns drawn. In the next scene, she drives the car into the bank and they escape. The owner is never seen or mentioned again.
• The Slumber Party Massacre: Linda is attacked in the school by Thorne and takes refuge in a closet. Thorne starts drilling through the door, causing Linda to scream in terror before the camera cuts away to Thorne running outside. It seems doubtful that Thorne would have been unable to get in and kill Linda, but his clothes don't have any blood splatter and he looks flustered and urgent to get away rather than pleased and in control.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (2020): The last Sonic and the audience see of Longclaw is her bracing for an attack by the warriors of the Echidna tribe. Since the portal ring closes before what happened next can be seen, it's not clear if she survived or not.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022) reveals that Longclaw did die. At the end of the film Doctor Robotnik falls from the Death Egg Robot. Jim Carrey confirmed that this would be his last film.
• Stalingrad (1993): Most of the German protagonists die, except for two soldiers who are seen surrendering to the Soviets. Their odds aren't great though. These survivors were sent to the Gulag in Siberia, and very few returned home after the war.
• Tell Me How I Die: In the climax, the male lead is stabbed through the chest by the killer, but the female lead helps him up and tries to get him to a doctor. The film ends before we can see if she succeeds or not.
• Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines: Elizabeth Anderson. T-X arrives at their house and shoots her brother, right before heading upstairs looking for Elizabeth. While she likely would have been killed by T-X, the large number of people at the party and the likely police response time might have made identification difficult. It's never explicitly stated that TX was able to find the right girl and kill her before moving on to the next name on the list (Kate).
• A major aspect of the end of John Carpenter's The Thing; MacReady has just exploded the Antarctic base in a final confrontation with the titular monster. Exhausted, he rests by the burning building content with freezing to death, only to encounter Childs, who is also still alive. Both MacReady and Childs are suspicious that other one may be the shapeshifting alien but as both are too tired they just share a drink and "wait to see what happens". Debate rages to this day about whether one, neither or both are the Thing. The TV edit ending (not done or approved by John Carpenter) on the other hand threw out all ambiguity and clearly showed the Thing escaping disguised as a Husky. Needless to say, this ending is not popular.
  • This also applies to Nauls, who — toward the end of the movie — is seen wandering off down a hallway to investigate a strange noise, and never comes back. Reportedly, there was a now-lost deleted scene where the Thing killed him, but the filmmakers weren't happy with the special effects and decided it would be more interesting to leave Nauls' fate ambiguous. The storyboards also show Nauls was partially assimilated and killed by Thing-tentacles. In the finished movie, it's still possible that the Thing got him, but it's also possible he was killed in the explosion or even that he's still alive somewhere at the end of the movie.
• Threads zig-zags this trope when it comes to Jimmy and Alison Kemp. Both are (separately) away from home when the nuclear attack begins, Alison having gone to the shops to pick up supplies, while Jimmy is at work, and unlike their younger brother, Michael, neither is confirmed to have been killed as a direct result of the bomb which hits Sheffield. Indeed, Alison is not seen at all during the attack sequences, and Jimmy is last seen trying to get to his pregnant fiancee, Ruth Beckett, just as the war escalates to include civilian targets. A girl who closely resembles Alison is later glimpsed among the inmates of a makeshift prison set up to contain looters, but it's not known if this is Alison or some other girl. There has been some speculation that the man seen briefly in the final scene is Jimmy, but Reece Dinsdale (the actor who played Jimmy) has stated that he did not appear in that scene. There's also no confirmation of Jimmy and Alison (assuming they survived the attack) having died from the long-term effects of the bomb, though the film's grimly realistic portrayal of nuclear war means it's not looking good for either of them.
• Titanic (1997): Some minor and supporting characters disappear in the second half of the film, notably Archibald Gracie, the old First Class passenger who offers Jack a reward and befriends him at dinner. He is last seen on deck as the final boats are leaving. As he’s an old man, it’s easy to assume he died, but deleted scenes show him amongst the survivors having been rescued by a lifeboat from the sea. Other minor characters who’s fates are left ambiguous are the wireless operators, Jack’s Swedish roommates, most of the officers and other notable crew members.
  • A deleted montage onboard the rescue ship Carpathia reveals that some of the officers, crew members and passengers did survive.
• Tunnel Rats: The shockwave from a bombing run traps Harris and Vo Mai in the tunnel at the end of the movie. They abandon their Mexican Standoff to try to dig their way out, but don’t seem optimistic about their chances when they see how much of the tunnel has collapsed.
• Utøya: July 22, a reenactment of the Breivik Massacre (which happened on the island Utøya on 22. July 2011) from the perspective of the victims. Near the end we see Kaja, the main heroine, going down after the shot, apparently dead, but we don't stay to see if she died or was merely wounded. In reality, most of those with a single wound (not to the head) survived. The man in the boat is also wounded and we do not know if he makes it.
• A Wedding (1978): At the end of the movie, Briggs steals Dino's car and dies when it crashes into an oil tanker. It is speculated that Tracy left and died with him due to her own absence, but it's also possible that she is fine and left separately or is merely somewhere else in the large mansion.

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