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Cliffhanger Copout

621 statements
115 feature instances
98 referencing feature instances

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Cliffhanger Copout	label	Cliffhanger Copout
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Cliffhanger Copout	comment	Cliffhangers tend to be a vital part of any serial story. They stop the action or drama right when tension is at its highest, leaving an audience on the edge of their seats in anticipation of a conflict resolution and wanting to stick around to see what happens next. The best cliffhangers pick up the story right where it left off and provide a clear resolution based on everything that was shown to have occurred to viewers in the previous installment. And then there's these... Unfortunately, sometimes writers may discover that they've written themselves into a corner with no way to resolve a cliffhanger based on how the prior episode, chapter, film, or story ended. When this problem arises, the writer may make a saving throw to cheat his way out of the problem in one of a few ways: Facts about a character's circumstances are retroactively Hand Waved between installments (e.g., the hero tied up in a burning building who was completely unable to break his bonds before a ceiling collapses in the previous episode suddenly becomes strong enough to break them and escape in the resolution.) Depending on the circumstances, this can lead to some pretty glaring Plot Holes. What is seemingly promised to happen at the conclusion of one installment turns out to be something else entirely or an Unreveal at the beginning of the next chapter. A new episode starts after a cliffhanger, and the shocking new issue is not addressed or acknowledged, and things plod on normally as if nothing ever happened. The new information may be picked up and addressed later in the episode (probably with a reminder since we had a week to forget about it), but it never seems so crucial or urgent as it did at the end of the last episode. More egregiously, the Story Arc leading up to the cliffhanger is aborted and/or explained away as All Just a Dream. If handled well enough, most viewers may not notice it, or even care all that much if they take the MST3K Mantra to heart. If not, a lot of people are going to feel duped and not very pleased with what they were rewarded with for their dedicated viewership. Can be observed frequently in old Film Serials of the 1930s-40s; it also makes this trope just slightly Older Than Television. See also What Cliffhanger, when circumstances surrounding the cliffhanger are deliberately vague and without any sense of drama or suspense to motivate viewers to stick around for more. May often involve the use of a Voodoo Shark. Compare Red Herring Twist. Pseudo-Crisis is a subtrope. Contrast Once More, with Clarity, in which new facts about the situation are revealed without retroactively changing the old ones. Has nothing to do with the movies Cliffhanger or Cop Out. Also, this being an Ending Trope, be prepared for Spoilers Ahead!
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_109f7814	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Cliffhanger Copout / int_109f7814	comment	Every season of Sherlock does this: "The Great Game" ends with John and Sherlock being held at gunpoint from all angles with no possible escape in sight, with Sherlock pointing his gun at a bomb near Moriarty. In "A Scandal in Belgravia", Moriarty decides to let them go because someone called him with "a better offer". "The Reichenbach Fall" ends with Sherlock jumping from a rooftop to his apparent death, even featuring a closeup of his blood-stained corpse, before the final shot reveals he's somehow alive. "The Empty Hearse" proceeds to play with the trope relentlessly, showing multiple flimsy explanations (such as Sherlock suddenly being attached to a bungee cord, and "his" corpse actually being Moriarty's in a Latex Perfection mask) that turn out to be the crackpot theories of Anderson and his group of Sherlock fans. It's finally subverted at the end of the episode, when Sherlock himself explains to Anderson exactly how he did it (and Word of God confirms he was telling the truth). "His Last Vow" ends with Sherlock about to be Reassigned to Antarctica, only to be pulled back when a video message seemingly from Moriarty surfaces, suggesting that he's Not Quite Dead. The Christmas Special, "The Abominable Bride", firmly establishes that no, Moriarty really is dead, and someone else is impersonating him. Who that person is, and what they have planned for Sherlock, becomes the Driving Question of Season 4. Episode 2 of the fourth series ends with the Big Bad firing a gun at Watson. By the start of the next episode, Watson shows up with Sherlock, no worse for wear, and it turns out it was just a tranquilizer shot. Never mind that a tranquilizer gun, unlike a firearm, shouldn't have produced a loud bang and a cloud of smoke.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_118963f9	comment	Near the end of Stand Clear of the Closing Doors, Ricky follows a man in a dragon jacket into a tunnel that floods while he's in there. The next scene shows Ricky walking on the beach, completely unscathed, with no explanation for how he survived.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_13363ae9	comment	Countdown to Final Crisis: One such instance features Wally West employing a Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique on Pied Piper and the Trickster by yanking a pair of cuffs attached to the two that's programmed to shock the both of them if something happens to it, and threatens to continue it until they tell him what happened to his murdered cousin Bart Allen. The following issue reveals that Piper and Trickster just imagined Wally pulling on the cuffs.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_160b4833	comment	Parodied in Clone High. Abe is launched out a high window by a bean-can explosion and sad music plays while he plummets. The scene pauses just as he is about to hit the ground with his face. When they come back, Abe is seen hovering just over a pool, where he falls in harmlessly.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_19ac548b	comment	Viz: Routinely done deliberately and for laughs in the "Billy the Fish" strip. Typically, the villain who is menacing the club will turn out to be just a cardboard cutout with a tape recorder on the back or that one of the club had arranged for Jeremy Beadle to play a trick on his teammates.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_1aa9d9f4	comment	A regular feature of the '60s Batman (1966) series. Famously, every other episode would end with the Dynamic Duo in a diabolical Death Trap, struggling against their bonds, desperately casting about for a means of escape, or glaring in fear and/or determination at their impending destruction while the narrator fretted about their certain doom. The next episode would begin with the Caped Crusaders escaping the trap, sometimes through legitimately inventive means, but just as often through copouts like "someone shows up to rescue them," "they'd prepared something earlier in the day and we didn't show you" or the ever-popular "they use a Bat-gadget they have on them for just such an emergency that they apparently briefly forgot they had during their moment of panic at the end of the last episode." If they were unconscious at the end of the previous episode, they'd generally just wake up. On one occasion they were saved by a power outage; on another, by an eclipse. A particularly notable instance was a Crossover with The Green Hornet, in which the Hornet and his sidekick Kato are actually fed through a machine that turns them into human-sized postage stamps! The cliffhanger is that the villain's thugs are about to do the same to Batman and Robin. The next-episode solution is...they fight off the thugs. And it turns out the Hornet and Kato managed to roll off the conveyor belt going through the stamp machine and were hiding inside it. Where did those human-sized stamps with their images on them in the previous episode come from?
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_1afbf6c5	comment	Many Transformers: Rescue Bots episodes start with one, to the point where it could be a Running Gag.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_20191a57	comment	Bleak Expectations: On occasion, Pip Bin will wind up in imminent danger which he survives by utterly implausible means (for example, series 2 episode 2 ends with him falling over a cliff. Episode 3 has him survive by falling onto a mattress orchard). This series being what it is, this is all played completely for laughs. That, and since the series is an elderly Pip Bin recounting his life, he has to survive.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_2212773a	comment	Angel: Angel sleeps with Darla despite the Gypsy Curse that says he will turn evil if he has a perfect moment of happiness. At the end of the episode there's a Call-Back to the last time this happened, on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with Angel waking up in bed clutching his chest in pain. The following episode explains that it wasn't quite perfect happiness, so Angel kept his soul, but no explanation is given for his physical symptoms. The Season 4 episode "Release" ends with Angelus defeating Faith, drinking her blood, and declaring that he's going to turn her into a vampire. The following episode, "Orpheus", opens with a flashback of Faith drugging herself with the titular drug as a back-up plan for defeating Angelus.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_22147342	comment	Arrow: The show had one of its own in Season Three when the Mid-Season Twist showed Ra's al Ghul thrusting a sword through Oliver's chest, then kicking his lifeless body off the side of a mountain. When the next episode aired, somehow the stab wound moved to the shoulder area, and Oliver managed to land on a nice soft snow bank not too far down the mountain side. In the season finale, "Lian Yu", Prometheus has rigged the entire island of Lian Yu with explosives that are set to go off after his death. The island is showered with explosions, and Oliver and his son William are the only ones clear from the blast zone, leaving the fate of everyone else in question. Come the following season's premiere the only casualty of the explosions is William's mother and Oliver's ex, minor character Samantha, while almost everyone else was relatively unharmed, with Thea and Diggle being the only ones to even have any sort of injury. Some people have gone on to compare it to Dynasty's "Moldavian Massacre" cliffhanger, with both shows even airing the cliffhangers at the end of their respective fifth seasons.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_227431b6	comment	Runaways: In issue 24 (Volume 2), the kids have finally dragged Chase back, they've beaten their foes once and for all, and they're tired and weary as they arrive home...To find Iron Man and a bunch of mooks waiting. In Issue 25, they begin by...Meeting with the Kingpin. Word of God tells their appropriate response: They ran away. At the end of their ongoing series, the last shot is of Chase getting hit by a truck, away from the rest of the group. He apparently survives and reunites with the others off-screen, and he is totally fine by the time they run into Daken in his series. Daken even asks what happened to him and all Chase answers with is "I got better."
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_2275c659	comment	In the second season of House, a two-part episode concludes with Foreman cured of a brain infection, but apparently left with brain damage and impaired motor function. Five minutes into the following episode, Foreman walks into House's office as normal, makes a passing comment about the weeks of rehabilitation he needed to regain proper control of his limbs, and other than House making the odd snarky remark about the whole thing, it's never referenced again.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_237a86c	comment	Hikonin Sentai Akibaranger: Episode 3 ends with Mitsuki announcing that she's leaving the team, and her comrades reacting in shock. Episode 4 opens with Mitsuki clarifying that she's leaving the team...for a three-day martial arts course, and that she'll return as soon as it's over. At the end of season 1, everyone figures out that they're in a TV show and try, unsuccessfully, to keep the show from ending. When the show did eventually get a second season, it would be pretty hard to keep a good plot going with the characters actively trying not to resolve the plot, so the second season began by shamelessly Retconning out all the metafictional stuff from the first season's plot and changing the ending entirely. Only at the end of the second season is the fictional nature of the world brought back into play.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_24a62796	comment	In the series finale of the original Dallas, JR Ewing takes out a gun after being convinced by a reflection of the Devil in his mirror that his life is meaningless now that he's lost Ewing Oil. JR holds the gun in his hand, and his brother Bobby hears a gunshot from downstairs. Bobby runs up, opens the door to JR's room with a look of shock on his face...and as the TV movie "JR Returns" would later explain, JR shot the mirror and climbed out the window, then fled to Paris to hide out for six months.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_24e41891	comment	Dexter. Several instances of something occurring that could have completely damned Dexter or caused problems were resolved a minute into the next episode. Of course, just as many times they were legitimate problems that Dexter spends the episode dealing with, but that just makes the Cliffhanger Copout and Pseudo-Crisis events stand out all the more.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_24ffd341	comment	It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: "The Gang's Still in Ireland" ends with Dennis, isolated in an old, remote castle and suffering a nasty case of COVID, gets Cabin Fever and starts trying to murder Dee in a scene out of a slasher film. It's followed by the episode "Dee Sinks in a Bog," in which we see that Dennis passed out due to fatigue from his illness and doesn't pose any actual threat.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_261c8d3f	comment	The Simpsons invokes the trope at the end of a chapter from a "Radioactive Man" film serial from the 1940s being screened at a comic convention. Earth is shown in the middle of an Earth-Shattering Kaboom, already clearly split in two by an atomic bomb when the action freezes and a narrator asks, "Will Radioactive Man be able to save the Earth in time?"
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_2b132158	comment	One Buck Rogers serial ended with Buck's friend Buddy collapsing after being shot as he was about to jump out of a window. The next serial starts with the shot missing, and Buddy escaping out of the window.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_2bb4ae0f	comment	A number of cliffhangers on Heroes would pique viewers' interest that one thing would happen and then would give them something entirely different. The episode "Truth & Consequences" from Volume 2, for example, ends with Hiro charging at Peter, who refuses to believe Hiro's claims that Adam Monroe is dangerous and is even willing to protect him, suggesting that the two characters were going to fight each other. The beginning of the following episode, "Powerless", shows Hiro, after his charge, deciding to just teleport around Peter and try and talk to him some more to convince him that Adam is evil. One episode ends with a powerless Sylar directly in the sights of a sniper rifle while kissing Elle. The next episode starts with Sylar and Elle in bed naked, clearly having had sex in the interim, and the sniper is still waiting.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_2d311a08	comment	Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987) pulled them on a regular basis, such as in the episode "20,000 Leaks Under the City", where Splinter is clearly seen falling down a waterfall, and when the show returns from the commercial break it rewinds and he's caught before he falls.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_2f6b4063	comment	Cinema Purgatorio parodies the way film serials of the 40s and 50s would depict the hero facing certain doom, then resolve it in an unlikely, unsatisfying, or even contradictory way in the next installment. Joe Casey and his gang repeatedly blatantly kill the Flame of Remorse and his girlfriend Dita, only for the act to be undone in increasingly absurd fashion — e.g. when the Flame of Remorse is thrown off a tall building it's suddenly shown to be a single-story grocery store and his fall is cushioned by boxes of egg cartons being unloaded.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_30a5ebfd	comment	Naruto gives us the Great Snake Escape. Deidara decides to self destruct and take Sasuke with him, setting off an absolutely enormous explosion, and Sasuke is out of chakra. The next chapter reveals that Sasuke somehow summoned Manda the Boss of All Snakes and most powerful of the Summons, mind controlled it, jumped in its mouth, and teleported it away; all things take large amounts of chakra, which Sasuke had just been shown to be out of in the previous chapter, and he did all this in the time it took the explosion to reach him when it had already gone off right next to him.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_34e98835	comment	Hatchet ended with one of the two survivors falling into the swamp. When she gets back to the boat, her fellow survivor is already dead, and his disembodied hand that "helped" her up is actually being held by Victor Crowley, leaving the girl at the mercy of the serial killer. The beginning of Hatchet II shows that the girl managed to fight him off and escape.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_3558eaa2	comment	Community: The second season ends with Pierce declaring he's done with the study group and walking out on them, leaving audiences to wonder what this would mean in the next season. The resolution is...Pierce walking into the study room, explaining he'd changed his mind, and asking them to take him back. Probably deliberate, since it wasn't considered likely that Pierce would be gone from the group for good. Hilarious in Hindsight seasons later when Chevy Chase's strained relations with the rest of the cast and crew finally broke, leading his character to get in the way of a passing bus.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_35a79eec	comment	In the middle of The Dark Phoenix Saga, Cyclops is struck down by a psychic bolt. The issue ends with the other X-Men exclaiming, "Cyclops is dead!" The next issue begins with Cyclops staggering back up, and the other X-Men saying, "Look, Cyclops is alive!"
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_35e05f2a	comment	RWBY: The episode "Rest and Resolutions" ends with the villains entering a camp with the intent of fighting their way in. When the show returns to this plot in "A Perfect Storm", the villains suddenly just want to talk and there's no mention of any of them ever having drawn weapons. The episode "The Lady In The Shoe" has both Ruby literally hanging onto the cliffside with her scythe while the airship that has Oscar and Maria inside it is shot down with a missile. The next episode, "Seeing Red", has Ruby just pull herself up while the airship is revealed to be just fine. The Volume Seven episode "Sparks" sees its cliffhanger ending completely resolved off-screen before the next episode, "Night Off", which subsequently happens yet again before the next episode, "Worst Case Scenario".
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_3be307d1	comment	Tenchi Muyo!: Played for Laughs during Kiyone's introductory episode in Tenchi Universe. Pre-commercial break, Kiyone has Ryoko at gunpoint with an epic battle apparently about to start. Post-break, they're calmly eating lunch together. Seconds later, Kiyone lampshades that this makes no sense and challenges Ryoko again.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_3defe34c	comment	Discussed in Stargate SG-1's infamous "200" episode. The alien scriptwriter has the characters running away from some aliens with 11 seconds to get to the gate. The team runs up to a cliff face and see a massive army of Jaffa between them and the gate. The real SG-1 call the writer out on such an obvious copout and provide the page quote for Viewers Are Geniuses.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_3f13a30c	comment	Spooks: The first series finale ended with Tom's laptop turning out to have had a bomb planted in it before he took it home, and his family having jammed the front door shut thanks to the security system he'd had installed to, ironically, keep them safe. He's warned about this by an ex-IRA source that's shot shortly afterwards, with the implication a new IRA splinter faction is on the rise. The second series opens with an explosion revealed to be from totally different terrorists that went off at the same time, while Tom's turned out to be a dud. The whole case is then turned over to "Section C" and the last we hear no progress had been made.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_3f3abe9	comment	Subverted in Rick and Morty. After Season 2 ended with Rick put into an intergalactic prison, Season 3 starts with him at a Shoney's, saying "And that's how I escaped from space prison!" to his family. However, he then asks Jerry to fold himself 12 times, which he does. It then turns out that Rick hasn't actually escaped yet, and he's been placed in a simulation based on his memories. Then played straight at the end of the episode, when the reason he was arrested is retconned to be part of his greater plan.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_457b671e	comment	At the end of the second season of 24, President David Palmer is infected with a virus transmitted by an assassin who shakes his hand as he's getting into his limousine. As the season ends, he's lying on the ground dying as Secret Service swarms over him, and the last sounds heard are his fading heartbeats. Cue the opening of the third season, and it turns out that Palmer's fine, and that he found and "punished" those responsible. (The intervening events are covered by the tie-in PS2 game.)
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_45e9bfb2	comment	The "Gathering of Five" arc ends with Green Goblin receiving a massive power boost and killing Spider-Man. The following issue it's revealed Gobby had gone crazy and most of the previous issue had been his hallucinations.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_4965ad6b	comment	Martial Law had a Retool-induced copout. The end of season 1 saw Sammo and Big Bad Lee Hei falling out of a helicopter over the ocean. Sometime during the summer, though, it was decided to retool the show, and instead of season 2 picking up off where the first had ended, it opened with a regular episode, with only scant allusions to a resolution to the previous events—Sammo asking if someone who's trying to kill him with a bomb is seeking vengeance for Lee Hei's death, and a fellow officer asking Sammo, "Hey, you fell out of a helicopter into the Pacific and survived...how much worse could a bomb be?"
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_4c095a1f	comment	The Transformers: The two-parter "Desertion of the Dinobots" from the G1 cartoon does this. The first episode ends with Spike and Carlie in the space bridge, with Shockwave shooting into the opening doors, causing a massive explosion. The beginning of part two has him firing a single shot that simply makes their car disappear, with no explosion at all. In the episode "Day of the Machines", a robot grappling with Optimus Prime slaps a control circuit card on him that puts him under the control of a Decepticon-hijacked supercomputer, which gloats about its victory over the Autobot leader as the scene goes to commercial. Upon returning to commercial, the computer has a couple more seconds to gloat before Optimus reveals he'd swapped out the control card the drone was wielding, with an inert one. Despite the fact that no opportunity for such an action had been visible during the prior struggle.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_529ee66	comment	In one Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog episode Dr. Robotnik ties up Tails' tails, making it impossible for him to fly. He then throws him and Sonic into a volcano, with Tails saying something like "I can't untie my tails!!" After the break, Tails unties his tails and they both escape.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_553051f	comment	Green Lantern: Vol. 4, #3 had Hal Jordan fly into the Yellow Central Power Battery with a Green Lantern (the object), with the goal of basically forcing the thing to enter its failsafe mode and shut down once a Green Lantern enters it. This plan was even devised by Sinestro himself, who created the Yellow Central Power Battery. Instead, the Power Battery disintegrates him, with it even saying "disintegration compete". The next issue instead opens with the Power Battery recognising that Hal isn't Sinestro, and instead aborts its attempt to transport Hal to the anti-matter universe (why it was doing this is not explained).
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_5562da6a	comment	A season finale of 3rd Rock from the Sun involved Harry being kidnapped by a deranged man played by Phil Hartman. By the time the next season started, Phil wasn't with us anymore. The show had no choice but to gloss over the circumstances of Harry's kidnapping with no real resolution.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_55f41ce9	comment	Curb Your Enthusiasm does this frequently. Season 8 ends with Larry and Leon fleeing to Paris, but Season 9 starts with Larry back in LA. Season 9 ends with Larry being chased by the Ayatollah, which is completely ignored in Season 10.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_5b344855	comment	Wolverine: Vol. 3 #46 ends with a Mandroid about to sever Logan's neck and spine with an adamantium buzzsaw. The next issue opens the same way, except the Mandroid realizes the buzzsaw he's holding isn't made of adamantium and can't cut through.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_5b408b1f	comment	The 4th Episode of The Walking Dead: Season Two ended with the main characters in a Mexican Standoff against another group of survivors. The protagonists outnumbered them, but despite this the other survivors were highly intimidating, implied to have once been connected to the Russian Mafia, and before anything can happen, one of your teammates dies of exhaustion and turns into a zombie. In spite of this, the only deaths at the start of the next episode were minor characters on their side. All the protagonists walked away alive.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_5b6bf864	comment	Uncanny X-Men #100 has Jean Grey in the cockpit of a damaged shuttle, flying through a massive radiation storm which we have been explicitly told several times will kill her. The issue ends with the radiation shielding giving out, and Jean faces certain, horrific death...two months later, issue #101 comes out, and the cover itself reveals Jean's fine and dandy. More than that, actually. Ultimately subverted in that what survived isn't actually Jean Grey.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_5ba6595e	comment	Reno 911! ended every season with a cliffhanger, and more often than not would start the next season with a cop out. Season 1 finale: Jones Faking the Dead causes all the deputies to kill each other in surprise. Season 2 premiere: It was All Just a Dream Within A Dream. Season 3 finale: Wiegel's serial killer boyfriend is about to be put to death, but the phone in the execution chamber rings, raising the possibility that he's been granted a stay of execution. Meanwhile, Dangle and Garcia are trapped in a car during a snowstorm, and the pre-credits teaser shows two firefighters opening up the car, only to react in horror while one says "Oh my god." Season 4 premier: It was just a wrong number, and Wiegel's boyfriend is immediately killed. Dangle and Garcia are also totally fine, and the firefighters were reacting to the sight of the two men huddling together while naked in order to keep warm. Season 4 finale: Dangle is about to enter into a gay marriage-analogue with another man when Garcia comes in, professes his love, and steals him away. Season 5 premiere: He was just kidding, and would like to remind Jim that gay marriage is illegal. Season 5 finale: All the deputies are riding on a squad car they decorated as a float as it drives into a massive fireball. The final shot is of a police funeral. Season 6 premiere: Garcia, Clementine, and Kimball are all dead.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_5d354f8	comment	Red Dwarf had several episodes ending in cliffhangers, and resolved the majority of them with Cliffhanger Copouts: "Balance of Power" ends with Lister triumphantly saying he passed the chef's exam, and thus now outranks Rimmer. "Waiting for God" reveals in Holly's Opening Narration that he was lying. "Parallel Universe" ends with Lister becoming pregnant after sleeping with his female Alternate Universe counterpart. This was briefly explained in "Backwards" as part of an Opening Scroll of Unreadably Fast Text, which also resolved the foreshadowing from the first series' second episode that Lister will eventually have twin sons. The writers did intend to spend the Series III premiere resolving that cliffhanger, but found that they couldn't make it funny enough and decided to just skip ahead. They also took the opportunity to explain away Kryten joining the cast and Holly changing appearance. "Out of Time" ended with the entire crew aboard Starbug as it was destroyed by their future selves. A quick gag at the beginning of "Tikka to Ride" reveals that this caused a paradox which hit the Reset Button. Although one of the outtakes videos also included an alternate ending in which Rimmer destroys the time drive himself, causing the future selves to disappear as they no longer had a time machine with which to travel back. The cliffhanger ending of "Only the Good..." — in which Rimmer is trapped aboard Red Dwarf as it disintegrates from a metal-eating virus and the rest of the crew have abandoned ship or escaped into the Mirror Universe — was emphatically not resolved by the miniseries Red Dwarf: Back to Earth, which instead begins with a title card saying "Nine Years Later". Given that the ship is intact and all the main characters are present and/or accounted for (though not alive in the once again holographic Rimmer's case), it's ambiguous whether Back to Earth even follows the cliffhanger or if it follows an alternate ending.note "Only the Good..." had an alternate ending which can be seen on the DVD's Deleted Scenes in which the crew manage to find an antidote to the virus and clearly survive The Series X finale, "The Beginning", finally addresses the Series VIII cliffhanger, with Rimmer claiming credit for saving Red Dwarf. He is interrupted before he's able to explain how he did it. Twice.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_5d7f0a07	comment	Turnabout Storm: Part 3 - Phoenix ends with Phoenix starting to ask a favor to Twilight's owl before cutting to black. Come Part 4, and it's revealed that it was just to help him get books to study more about Equestria on his own. Useful, yes; but not the case-changing development that would be expected.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_605dd875	comment	Stargate: Discussed in Stargate SG-1's infamous "200" episode. The alien scriptwriter has the characters running away from some aliens with 11 seconds to get to the gate. The team runs up to a cliff face and see a massive army of Jaffa between them and the gate. The real SG-1 call the writer out on such an obvious copout and provide the page quote for Viewers Are Geniuses. One episode of Stargate Universe has a small group of people stuck on a planet with no way to get to the ship where the rest of the cast is on for various reasons. Next episode a brief mention is given to them but nothing is done to solve the problem, however the ship breaks down around a third of the way through and suddenly the characters reappear no worse for wear.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_60996c02	comment	Spider-Man: The Animated Series. Often, a weapon aimed at Spider-Man indicated he was in immediate danger before cutting to a commercial break; following the break, Spider-Man simply jumped out of the way.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_60b9f111	comment	Wynonna Earp ends the first season with Waverly being possessed by a demon unbeknownst to the rest of the group, then pulling out a gun and pointing at Wynonna's face before the screen cuts to black and a gunshot sounds. The second season starts with the reveal she was pointing it at another demon standing somewhere behind Wynonna.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_61234a3f	comment	The Rookie Season 1 finale Bradford is infected by a bioterrorist's lethal pathogen and is being rushed to the hospital after collapsing. Season 2 starts with the ambulance being attacked by another terrorist only for Bradford to burst out of the ambulance, no worse for the wear, and gun them down. Also Season 1 to 2, Bishop's future at the department was on the line due to an investigation and the decision was still in the air. When her actress quit between seasons, Bishop simply left the LAPD and joined the ATF instead.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_64f2a24a	comment	The first season of One Hundred Deeds For Eddie Mc Dowd ended with a cliffhanger wherein Eddie was faced with a choice between saving Justin or himself. The second season opened with absolutely no acknowledgement or resolution to that cliffhanger.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_691be369	comment	Near the end of the 4th season finale of The X-Files, the audience sees Mulder alone in his apartment, crying hysterically with his gun in his hands. We cut away just before hearing his gun go off. The next scene is a flash forward in which Scully has apparently been called to his apartment to identify the body of a white male who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. She identifies it as Mulder. The next season begins by revealing that Scully was lying, the body is not Mulder's, and the whole crying holding his gun thing was not related to anything. Made even worse that Chris Carter lied to Gillian Anderson when instructing her how to play that final scene, telling her that Mulder was alive, but Scully genuinely thought he was dead. Since Anderson is a great actress but Scully isn't, her tearful and quite moving statement about Mulder's death feels very cheap in retrospect.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_6cd6c4e8	comment	The eighth episode of iZombie ends with Ravi being bitten by an infected zombie rat. Despite the implications that he would become a Zombie Infectee, the next episode has him quickly conclude that rat-bites are not infectious after showing no symptoms and the incident is forgotten.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_6cf5fb1f	comment	The Time Tunnel sometimes changed the context in which a cliffhanger took place at the beginning of the next episode. For example, you find that the heroes weren't in as much danger as you thought they were, or, at least, that it was a different kind of danger than you thought.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_6e1d5f36	comment	Farscape: The first season ended with John Crichton and D'Argo adrift in space with Aeryn unable to rescue them due to enemy ships in the vicinity. The second season opens with D'Argo jolting awake and John explaining that Aeryn was eventually able to scoop them up and drop them to safety at their current location. Part of the issue is that "Mind The Baby" was actually meant to be the second episode of the season. After filming the original premiere, which involved the rest of Moya's crew on a side-journey to a planet full of lawyers, the producers felt it wasn't strong enough to justify making the audience wait an extra week for the resolution of the cliffhanger. The original episode was shuffled to later in the season (and framed as a flashback) which left John and D'Argo's rescue feeling rather abrupt and anti-climactic.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_6f734712	comment	Smallville: the Season 3 finale "Covenant" ends with Chloe's house exploding the instant she closes the door upon entering it, but a flashback in the second episode of Season 4, "Gone", shows her escaping, with the time between closing the door and the explosion miraculously expanding to fit Lex's men getting her to safety.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_70da6e51	comment	Goosebumps was notorious for doing this several times a book, often at the end of nearly every chapter. The series for the most part is an anthology but some will have sequels with Stine not even trying to make an attempt to explain or resolve the prequels Plot Twist or how the protagonist escaped.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_73a9c933	comment	The midseason finale of The Walking Dead Season 6 showed Rick and company escaping from their house into a herd of walkers. As they try to silently move past the walkers, Sam starts calling for his mom, causing the walkers to become louder and more angry. Later, the midseason premiere opens with scenes from the previous episode, again showing Sam calling to his mom, only this time the noise isn't suggested as provoking the walkers, and the group manages to evade the herd without incident.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_78fc0025	comment	The second episode of Twin Peaks ends with Agent Cooper having a dream from which he learns the identity of who killed Laura Palmer. Cooper immediately wakes up from the dream to call up Sheriff Truman that he knows who the murderer is but teases that the answer could "wait 'till morning." Come the next episode, taking place that following morning, Cooper recaps all the events from the dream that ended with Laura Palmer whispering the name of her killer in his ear. Then, once he's asked who the killer is, Cooper nonchalantly responds "I don't remember."
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_7cf5a07	comment	The Flash (2014): Season 1 ended with a singularity opening up above Central City and Barry Allen/the Flash racing up to stop it, as a Running Gag Homage to his last run in Crisis on Infinite Earths. Season 2 showed that the city had suffered minimal damage, and the Flash survives and has been secretly mending the actual damage. However, stopping the singularity did have one casualty: Ronnie Raymond, one-half of Firestorm. "Enter Zoom" ends with The Flash brutally beaten by Zoom and his final words of the episode are Barry telling his friends in a blind panic that he can't feel his legs. Cut to the start of the next episode and the first shot is Barry walking again (albeit only a few steps before tiring) and a couple of throwaway lines about how much he's healed in a week. While it is worth noting that the majority of the episode is spent with Barry still healing, the immediate cliffhanger of Barry being crippled is totally jumped. Watching the episodes back to back leads to the "cliffhanger" lasting as long as the closing credits. Season 4 has a subversion, which ended with the Flash and Iris' Kid from the Future Nora finally introducing herself, and telling them that, by helping her father during the battle against the Thinker, she may have accidentally messed with the timeline. Throughout the first episode of Season 5, Barry immediately figures out that Nora made up the broken timeline story just so she can spend time with him. Then it's later revealed that Nora did cause new problems when the Serial Killer Cicada had a vastly-different origin (and even identity) from what she remembered from her history books.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_7d5e43b0	comment	Spoofed on The Goodies when our three heroes escape a Death Trap set up by Mad Scientist Rat Fink Petal via the entirely unexplained use of Graham's fruit peeler. Unfortunately Petal is waiting outside the door, so they end up strapped to another deathtrap and have to escape on screen (though no less improbably).
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_7e89bc01	comment	The Green Hornet Serials had plenty. From "The Green Hornet" Chapter 3 ends with the Hornet in a crashing plane. In Chapter 4, the Hornet somehow acquires enough time and altitude to bail out safely. Having a parachute in the first place is not a copout, as we see him put it on in Chapter 3. At the end of Chapter 7, the Hornet and his opponent are in the back of a truck when the bridge gives out underneath them. At the start of Chapter 8, both men fall out of the truck just before it reaches the bridge. In Chapter 9, the Hornet is trapped by Axford and Jenks. Axford shoots through the door of the storage closet the Hornet is hiding in, breaking some chemical bottles. The chapter ends with the Hornet passing out from the fumes. When Chapter 10 starts, Reid has enough time to ditch his disguise before pretending to pass out. Chapter 11 ends with the Hornet and a crook fighting in a caboose, which derails when the other crooks uncouple the end cars. They are clearly seen in the caboose as it tumbles. Chapter 12 shows both men falling out of the caboose before it derails. For bonus copout points, the crooks wanted to uncouple the cars to put pressure on a shipping company. The recap scroll says the company’s cars were uncoupled, but when one crook reports back to Monroe he says the train broke apart behind the target cars, and the shipping company’s cars got through safely. Chapter 12 ends with the Hornet and an extortionist fighting in a burning office. When Chapter 13 starts, there's no sign of fire...and both the Hornet and the crook have forgotten about last chapter's confession. From "The Green Hornet Strikes Again!" Chapter 5 ends with a warehouse full of illegal munitions being bombed, and the Hornet at Ground Zero. Chapter 6 starts with the Hornet having enough time to take cover in the basement. Chapter 7 ends with the Hornet’s plane crashing after being an accidental test subject for a new antiaircraft weapon. At the start of Chapter 8, he has just enough time for a no-parachute bailout. In Chapter 11, the Hornet and some truck hijackers are fighting when the truck goes over a cliff. There's a different camera angle spliced in for Chapter 12, showing the Hornet jumping out at the last minute. There’s another warehouse with illegal explosives in Chapter 12. The chapter ends with the Hornet ramming a racketeer's car through the warehouse door, hitting the explosives, and big boom. Chapter 13 gives him enough time to see the crates of explosives and dive out before the car hits them. Chapter 14 ends with the Hornet and a racketeer fighting in the racketeer's open car, which goes off the road and wrecks during the fight. Chapter 15 starts with the Hornet being knocked out of the car just before the accident.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_805012bf	comment	London's Burning subverts and uses the trope straight in the same situation. One episode finished with a sewer explosion knocking one of the firemen on his back and sending a manhole cover flying into the air. Viewers saw a shot of the cover flying end over end...and landing straight on the hapless firemen's head, all from his point of view. The next episode opened with the same shot but finished with him waking up, as it was All Just a Dream. Then it turned out it really had happened (subverting this trope), but the cover only landed near him despite how it looked previously (looping back to play the trope straight), causing him to have recurring nightmares.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_85a5a3b9	comment	Transformers: Prime: The Season 2 finale ends with Megatron and Starscream standing in the ruins of the Autobot base before panning to Optimus Prime's hand, broken and sparking, sticking out of the wreckage, the clear implication being that he's dead. At the start of Season 3, it is revealed that Optimus was still alive, albeit heavily damaged, and his rescue from the ruins by Smokescreen is a further copout, as he was last seen going through the Ground Bridge to an unknown location, and he wasn't even the last one to leave the base.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_89bf8ce	comment	The third season of 30 Rock ended with Jack having just discovered his real father, played by Alan Alda. He reveals he needs a kidney, so Jack creates a "We Are the World"-esque fundraiser to get him one. Then the next season starts with no mention of Jack's father. A throwaway line in season five eventually confirmed that Jack did manage to give his father a kidney - Elvis Costello's. Similarly, Kenneth must have somehow escaped the Chinese assassin in the second-season finale, since he's alive in the third season.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_8ac8591a	comment	This was so common in the Undersea Kingdom serial that Wikipedia keeps a list of these. When Joel and the Bots watched the first two chapters in the serial where the cliffhanger saw Crash and Billy trapped on top of a cliff while it collapses underneath them from missile fire, the resolution in the following installment shows Crash and Billy climbing back down from the cliff before the collapse, prompting Tom Servo to reference the line from Misery, "How did they get off the cock-a-doodie cliff? This is wrong!"
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_8d840259	comment	SCTV parodied the trope extensively with the fake Republic serial "Six-Gun Justice", using every version of it imaginable — from false suspense (the bomb mistakenly dropped on Don, Maggie and Cheaplaffs turning out to be a dud) to changing details between episodes (the heroes fitting between the spokes of a falling wagon-wheel chandelier, when in the recap it's shown to drop at an angle and break their necks), to absolute nonsense casually hand-waved (the heroes escaping from the exploding powder keg underneath them by "the shock of the explosion loosen[ing our] ropes").
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_8deb62ad	comment	The first season of Prison Break ended with the main characters running through a field after their getaway plane left without them, while cops close in from almost every direction. In the beginning of the second season, it's revealed that they got away by...running through a forest and maneuvering around a moving train, which stops the cops from chasing them. It's made worse by the fact that the first season ends at night, but the second season begins during the day, raising the question of what, exactly, happened in what must have been several hours between the episodes.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_8e78bc29	comment	Red vs. Blue: The Shisno Trilogy: "It Just Winked At Me" ends with Tucker and Sister at held at crossbowpoint by medieval knights. We don't see them again until a few episodes later, where we find that Tucker had somehow become king of Camelot, redubbed Cameltoe, with the knights believing his sword is Excalibur.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_8ece87af	comment	Misery has Annie Wilkes vent about this trope. She explains to Paul that her favorite Superhero, Rocketman was seemingly killed in a firey crash in one episode but that the next installment had him leap from the vehicle just before it crashed and caught fire. She mentions that all of the children cheered except for her because "he didn't get out of the Cockledoodie Car!!!". This exchange is notable because it's one of the first clues that Annie isn't quite right..
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_8fa663d0	comment	The Batman cliffhanger serials of the 1940s were very much guilty of this time and time again. Chapter 13, "Eight Steps Down", ends with Batman stuck in a Death Trap where spiked walls are closing in on him which is cut away from just before the walls are about to crush our hero with no hope in sight for rescue. Then, the beginning of Chapter 14, "The Executioner Strikes," shows Robin appearing much earlier during the same scene with more than enough time to slip Batman a crowbar to brace the walls moving in. In turn, the conclusion of Chapter 14 shows Batman locked in a box and dropped in an alligator pit only for the next chapter to show that Robin managed to break Batman free in secret much earlier and had put a hapless Mook back in the box in Batman's place. The conclusion of Chapter 10 and beginning of Chapter 11 show Batman miraculously jumping out from a car before it careens off a bridge and bursts into a fireball. Another particularly bad one: Batman falling several stories and visibly slamming into the ground is resolved by it not being Bruce in the suit, but a minor villain who decided to put it on for no apparent reason. This was actually telegraphed in the scene right before the cliffhanger actually showing Bruce walking away and putting on his hat, but it's blink-and-you-miss-it. Another episode ends with Batman in a plane that crashes in a fiery explosion. The next episode shows him just staggering out of the wreckage a little dazed while the mooks who were also on the plane both died from the crash.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_90032631	comment	In the sixth series of Orange Is the New Black, an episode closes with two characters locked in the same cell whose showdown had been teased throughout their character arcs all season and only acted out up to that point through proxies. Within 90 seconds of the next episode starting they're returned to their respective cell blocks with no confrontation besides a stare off.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_90b9ae74	comment	Happens fairly often in Farce of the Three Kingdoms and is always Played for Laughs. The worst offender is probably Chapter 41; Chapter 40 ended with Zhang Fei and Cao Ren facing off for a duel. Chapter 41 begins with Zhang Fei realizing that, due to a continuity error in the original novel, he should be somewhere else entirely. After consulting the book, both parties agree to pretend the whole thing never happened.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_91f441b4	comment	The Rolling Stones (1952): In Robert A. Heinlein's story inside a story, "Scourge of the Spaceways", John Serling ends one season in an unsurvivable Death Trap. He starts the next season out of the Death Trap and, hero that he is, is too modest to tell people how he managed to escape. Then the next adventure starts.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_976efc02	comment	Mystery Science Theater 3000: As some of the the Film Serial examples may suggest, whenever the gang watches back-to-back chapters of an old serial short film, someone will always point out the copout. Tom Servo will always go into Annie's "He didn't get out of the cock-a-doodie car!'' speech as well, with Kathy Bates' inflections. In Season 11, Jonah is about to probably spit out the "I Do" to complete his Shotgun Wedding to Kinga Forrester when Max unleashes Mecha Reptilicus, who eats Jonah. Season 12 starts out with Jonah tossing off a tattered helmet as he returns to the Satellite of Love, eager to tell the Bots how he survived. They really don't care. Twice. And neither do Kinga or Max when he tries to tell them, too.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_9da908aa	comment	Yellowjackets: Younger Lottie ends Season 1 by wearing the Antler Queen headdress and summoning "the darkness to set them free" in French for Misty and Van. Come Season 2, she doesn't wear the veil, her pursuit of the "darkness" is no deeper than guided breathing in the woods, and Misty has minimal interest in the burgeoning cult. Ultimately, it's Van who falls deepest into the cult, and triggers the first cannibal hunt in "It Chooses" while Lottie is recovering from serious injuries.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_9e1e1974	comment	The morphE webcomic had to go on a brief hiatus in 2014 while the creators dealt with a couple conventions and prepared a large amount of content for a coming update. Prior to the hiatus the comic ended with one of the main characters, Billy Thatcher, being shot in the head. After the hiatus the scene is reversed and it is revealed and replayed with Billy getting shot in the shoulder instead, revealing Amical had turned back time "one turn" and altered his actions.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_9e99fedb	comment	The Lawnmower Man ended with the villain transferring his mind into cyberspace and causing all telephones in the world to ring, to inform people of his new condition. In the sequel, that scene is shown again. From the following scene and throughout the entire movie, the villain is back in his actual body.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_9f830fe0	comment	Parodied in Bored of the Rings. Wizard/flim-flam artist Goodgulf is last seen plummeting to his death. Later in the story he suddenly reappears, but is oddly cagey about the circumstances of his uncanny resurrection. Legolam the elf excitedly demands the story of how he survived the clutches of the ballhog, lived through the flames, recovered from the fall into the boiling pit, and escaped the bloodthirsty narcs to find his old comrades.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_9f997b2b	comment	Quantum of Solace ends with Bond's vendetta unresolved, with Mr White still at large and the Quantum organisation still active. This thread is completely abandoned in the next film Skyfall, and when it's ultimately taken up again in Spectre, Quantum is simply retconned as being a daughter organisation to Spectre and receives no further attention.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_a46c9a7a	comment	X-Men: In the middle of The Dark Phoenix Saga, Cyclops is struck down by a psychic bolt. The issue ends with the other X-Men exclaiming, "Cyclops is dead!" The next issue begins with Cyclops staggering back up, and the other X-Men saying, "Look, Cyclops is alive!" Uncanny X-Men #100 has Jean Grey in the cockpit of a damaged shuttle, flying through a massive radiation storm which we have been explicitly told several times will kill her. The issue ends with the radiation shielding giving out, and Jean faces certain, horrific death...two months later, issue #101 comes out, and the cover itself reveals Jean's fine and dandy. More than that, actually. Ultimately subverted in that what survived isn't actually Jean Grey.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_a78fff6d	comment	SeaQuest DSV ended Season 2 on a Bolivian Army Cliffhanger, with the ship being sunk in a war on an alien planet, and most of the remaining crew trapped aboard an alien sub that's about to go full Death Star—so they blow it up while still aboard. When the show was Only Barely Renewed, all but a couple of the regulars were returned to Earth intact: they'd been swept out into the alien sea, which somehow put them into healing comas rather than drowning them, and were rescued by the friendly alien rebels. Meanwhile, the underequipped rebels somehow restored the blown-apart seaQuest to mint condition, dumped it in an Iowa cornfield, and were never heard from again.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_abfcff6a	comment	This is very common in Rocky and Bullwinkle, as the animation has little continuity within the same episode, much less between them. One specific example: an episode of the Upsidaisium arc ended with Bullwinkle holding a chunk of Upsidaisium and floating off into the sky. In the next episode, Rocky suggests Bullwinkle use his pick to break bits off of the chunk until he descends slowly, and he lands safely. In the previous episode, Bullwinkle was not holding a pick. This also rather blatantly occurred during the Wossamatta U arc. One episode ends with Bullwinkle (playing for the eponymous college's football team) a mere foot away from inadvertently scoring the winning goal for the opposing team after chasing a disguised Boris without thinking about where he was going, after which the entire opposing team tackles the confused Bullwinkle before he can do anything as the game ends seconds later. The next episode opens by revealing that Boris had slipped away to the other end of the stadium behind the other goal (though, granted, this was at least foreshadowed), and Bullwinkle, looking for something to throw at Boris, decided to throw the football he was carrying at Boris before Hard Knox's team tackled him, with Rocky intercepting it and winning Wossamatta the game just in time.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_ad20e006	comment	Wonder Woman: "Phantom of the Roller Coaster: Part 1" ends with Diana Prince inside her car looking back, just before an enormous truck smashed it...with her inside. Part 2 begins with an already transformed Wonder Woman outside the car lassoing the perpetrators.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_b0cf0ed6	comment	Danger Mouse, whose stories were serialized in seasons two through four, had a rather egregious one in "The Duel". The end of episode three had DM and Penfold in a room with the walls closing in on them. When episode four commences, Penfold just happens to have a large spanner that DM gave him for Christmas. DM uses it to stop the walls.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_b30ae4db	comment	Game of Thrones: In the series' Cold Open, a Night's Watch ranger comes face-to-face with a White Walker who's just killed his two comrades, but in the very next scene he's running around the North hundreds of miles to the south, with no explanation of how he escaped. This is also an Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole since in the books the survivor is never spotted by the White Walkers. The Season 2 finale features Sam Tarly cowering ineffectually behind a rock as a horde of White Walkers and their undead wight minions advance towards the Fist of the First Men, ending just as one of the passing White Walkers turns to look right at him. The opening of Season 3, however, show Sam running through the dim snowy wilderness before being attacked by a single wight that still manages to almost kill him before he's rescued. While the battle was obviously skipped for budgetary reasons, it still never explained how Sam managed to survive an entire undead army that had already seen him. Theon and Sansa end Season 5 attempting to escape Winterfell by leaping from its high walls with only the briefest shot of a very thin skiff of snow to imply they might survive and miles of open ground to cross before they reach any cover. Come Season 6, however, and they're already running through the forest without so much as a twisted ankle and their captor, who has a whole army and loves Hunting the Most Dangerous Game, sends just six men after them.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_b4996199	comment	Spider-Man: One issue of The Clone Sage was hugely emotional for Peter Parker; him asking his clone to take care of his wife, and in general as heartfelt a sendoff as you could ask for a beloved character. The first thing that happens in the following issue is his corpse convulsing back to life with his super-powers restored. The "Gathering of Five" arc ends with Green Goblin receiving a massive power boost and killing Spider-Man. The following issue it's revealed Gobby had gone crazy and most of the previous issue had been his hallucinations.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_b50cc7e6	comment	The Incredible Hulk: The Incredible Hulk (1968) #116 ends with The Leader pushing a button to launch an American nuke in an attempt to start World War III, so he can rule over what's left. Meanwhile, The Hulk is trapped in a "cage of living plasti-thene". Come #117, and apparently, the button needs to be pushed twice to actually launch, giving the Hulk a chance to escape and Save the World.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_b7e8e4b6	comment	In the 1980s My Little Pony 'n Friends series, the cliffhangers in all multi-part stories were invariably resolved about 10 seconds into the next part - often while showing the short recap and having a character doing something they had not previously been doing (such as escaping being bound) or standing in different positions. Frequently, any cosmetic changes to characters (such as being covered in gunge or wearing different than usual clothes or their hair being styled differently than normal) were not carried over into the next episode, as each episode was seemingly produced by a different group of animators. For instance, the cliffhanger for the third part of "Bright Lights" had Zeb, The Dragon to that week’s villain, preparing to take Molly’s shadow with Lofty unable to help her. However, at the start of the fourth part, Zeb wastes so much time that Lofty is able to break free of her restraints and save Molly, escaping before Zeb can take either of their shadows.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_b962c879	comment	In Fairy Tail, Wendy gets hit by a spell and vanishes into thin air at the end of the chapter. At the start of the next, she's just inside Horologium, who conveniently popped up right then and is clinging to the ceiling. Pretty funny that, before we realize that Wendy is safe and not hit by Hades' attack, Hades keeps a very calm face, as if Wendy disappearing was supposed to happen.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_b974f3ca	comment	The "Moldavian Massacre" on Dynasty (1981) is an (in)famous case of this. At the end of the fifth season, two major characters (Amanda and Prince Michael) get married in a ceremony attended by nearly the entire main cast in the country of Moldavia (an archaic name for Moldova). However, a group of terrorists crash the ceremony and spray the entire audience and newlyweds with bullets, with the final image of the season being everyone lying on the ground motionless. This cliffhanger was done ostensibly so the producers had an out if any cast members wanted to leave. When the show, returned, however, it was revealed that only two minor characters had died. This is often cited as the reason for the show's ratings decline, as it slid from first to seventh place after the conclusion to the cliffhanger was revealed.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_bb11f764	comment	This Day: The previous film ended on a big cliffhanger; Laura's car was seen entering a tunnel and not emerging from the other side, while Massimo had simultaneously learned a rival crime family had targeted Laura for assassination. While most viewers knew Laura wasn't going to die, it was uncertain what happened to Laura and how she would get out of this mess. However, the start of this film completely glosses over it and skips ahead to Laura and Massimo's nuptials, with the only explanation being that Laura got into a car accident and came out unscathed save for a miscarriage.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_c0aa8ea9	comment	One episode of Stargate Universe has a small group of people stuck on a planet with no way to get to the ship where the rest of the cast is on for various reasons. Next episode a brief mention is given to them but nothing is done to solve the problem, however the ship breaks down around a third of the way through and suddenly the characters reappear no worse for wear.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_c1376571	comment	At the end of one episode of the second season of The Bridge (2011), a group of armed Animal Wrongs Group terrorists attack Saga in her hotel room. At the beginning of the next episode, she curb-stomps them in seconds.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_c43df4d8	comment	Doctor Who has done this numerous times, largely due to volume. Every non-terminal episode of the classic series ended in a cliffhanger, and terminal ones sometimes did too. Part Two of "Genesis of the Daleks" is another well-known example. Sarah Jane is leading a prison escape up a giant scaffolding tower, when she slips and falls in a dramatic freeze-frame. Unfortunately, Part Three begins with her landing on a previously-unmentioned plank just below. The most frustrating thing is that she clearly fell on the outside of the tower, but the plank could only have been on the inside. The Peter Davison era in particular was mocked for the number of cliffhangers which had the Doctor and/or a companion about to be killed by a Dragon or Mook, only for a superior villain to turn up as soon as the next episode started and order their lives spared. Famously, in "The Caves of Androzani", you actually see the Doctor and Peri get shot, execution style, and fall down dead. The following episode resolves the conflict ten seconds in, when it is revealed that the executed parties were actually robot look-a-likes. (Though it's worth noting they do play fair - the moment of the switch is shown in the episode and plainly obvious on a rewatch, and the life-like robots were already established.) A notorious cliffhanger from the Sixth Doctor story "The Mark of the Rani" involves the Doctor hurtling down a hill strapped to a gurney, headed for a mine's pithead. The reprise inserts shots not shown in the cliffhanger of the guest hero running toward the gurney, so that the resolution can be him saving the Doctor before he falls in the pit. The most (in)famous, not to mention literal, example is probably from "Dragonfire"; in which the Doctor dangles himself over a precipice on his brolly and starts losing his grip, gurning ridiculously while we see shots of an abyss under his feet. This happens for no obvious reason other than because the episode was coming to an end. In the next episode a friend suddenly appears and helps lower him onto another ledge that was not present in the abyss shot. According to the script editor, the ledge he was on was supposed to come to an end, prompting him to try to get to the next one down and misjudge the distance, but the set was incorrectly realized so that it looked like he just decided to go over the edge. The new series pulled an Author's Saving Throw on this one, revealing it as one of several cases where the Great Intelligence altered events in the Doctor's timeline to try to kill him. "Aliens of London" ends with the Ninth Doctor and every other person in the room electrocuted by the Slitheen at a lethal level. Seconds into the following episode the Doctor manages to rip off the badge that carries the shock, tells the Slitheen that since he's not human it's not lethal to him, and runs off. "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances": The Ninth Doctor and his companions are cornered by a horde of childlike gasmask zombies. The virus seems to pass by touch, so one touch will turn them all into zombies. The conclusion opens with the Doctor telling the zombies to go to their room, and it works. At the end of "Rise of the Cybermen", the Doctor tries to convince the Cybermen who've cornered his group that they're surrendering, only for the Cybermen to ignore this and ominously chant "Delete! Delete!" as the episode ends; when the following episode "The Age of Steel" begins, the Doctor suddenly pulls a tool out of nowhere which kills the Cybermen then and there. Because if the Doctor had this tool at his disposal, there was little reason to try and surrender and even less to hesitate for about 10 seconds before killing the enemy; they don't even suggest that he was possibly trying to buy enough time until the tool was fully charged to destroy the Cybermen, which actually make sense if it's the case. This is justified by the "tool" actually being the TARDIS's charging power cell, whose use as a weapon started the charging process all over again. For obvious reasons, the Doctor was reluctant to cut off his ultimate escape route. At the end of "The Stolen Earth", the Doctor is shot, dragged to the TARDIS by his companions and starts to regenerate, meanwhile Sarah Jane Smith is facing down two Daleks unarmed. 15 seconds into the following episode, series finale "Journey's End", the Doctor heals himself using the regeneration energy without changing, 15 seconds after that two characters who haven't appeared for two seasons appear to rescue Sarah Jane. This is helped a bit by the show later confirming that it did indeed count as a regeneration, bringing the Doctor one step closer to true death after his thirteenth life. This happened in regards to Donna in "The End of Time". The Doctor had previously wiped her memories of him and warned if she ever started to remember she would burn to death. At the end of episode one she starts to remember and her head starts to hurt...and at the beginning of episode two she just gets knocked out. Turns out it was all just a defence mechanism. "The Beast Below" ends on the Doctor getting a phone call from Winston Churchill, who asks for his help as the shadow of a Dalek approaches, suggesting he's in immediate danger. In "Victory of the Daleks", it turns out that the Doctor and Amy arrive a month after Churchill made the call, and he's since gotten used to having the "Ironsides" around. He just wanted the Doctor's opinion on them, but now he's made up his mind. "The Pandorica Opens" ends with the Doctor locked in an inescapable prison specifically designed to hold him. Next week, the pre-credit teaser actually adds an extra cliffhanger to the excitement by revealing that somehow Amy and the Doctor exchanged places. Post credits, the Doctor from the future, already out of the Pandorica, just goes back in time and lets himself out (putting dead Amy inside the preserve her). He only got out in the first place because Rory was able to let him out using the Doctor's sonic screwdriver (which only happened because the Doctor got let out). "The Impossible Astronaut" ends with Amy shooting the person in the spacesuit a.k.a. the little girl. In "Day of the Moon", it turns out that she missed, and the episode begins three months after the event. "Asylum of the Daleks" ends with the Doctor having accidentally wiped himself from the memories and histories of the Daleks, with the implication that this is going to create a whole new dynamic between them. The next appearance of the Daleks reveals that...they've just regained their memories of him off-screen. The new series episode "The Name of the Doctor" suggests an in-story justification for every single case where a seemingly inescapable death was resolved in anticlimactic fashion: the Great Intelligence trying to sabotage the Doctor's timeline only for one of Clara's temporal doppelgängers to undo the damage. Played with in "Heaven Sent": the Doctor finds himself in peril, only for the story to cut back to him entering the TARDIS, safe and sound. If turns out he is still very much in peril, but that imagining himself back in the TARDIS explaining to his companion how he got out of that tight spot is his method of finding out how to actually do it. At the end of "The Halloween Apocalypse", the TARDIS is about to be hit by the Flux, a Negative Space Wedgie that is destroying the universe, with the doors flying open to expose the Doctor and companions to it. At the start of "War of the Daleks", the Doctor and companions are in Sevastopol during the Crimean War, and the TARDIS is sealed up behind them. Neither the Doctor nor anyone else has the slightest idea what just happened.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_c72c2d06	comment	Star Wars Rebels: Part 1 of "Heroes of Mandalore" has Sabine's mother and brother apparently being vaporized by a new Imperial weapon. The episode ends with Sabine arriving at the scene and finding no survivors, only some charred suits of Mandalorian armor, seemingly confirming their fate. Part 2 immediately begins with Sabine's mother and brother showing up alive and explaining that they managed to get out of the weapon's range before it was fired.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_c75d67d	comment	Person of Interest: One episode in season four ended with Finch looking at a street camera and telling The Machine that it was time for him and it to talk. Come the next episode...and it was like the cliffhanger had never happened. No mention is made of the conversation, it's not even revealed how they could have had a conversation, and it's never brought up again.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_c934dbb2	comment	Happens frequently in Shaggy Dog Stories, where many episodes (especially earlier ones) will end on a cliffhanger, and the following episode turns out to be totally different.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_c9a98ba0	comment	The second episode of True Detective's second season ends on a completely unexpected cliffhanger that had people talking for a week, as it seemed as if Colin Farrell, billed as the star of season 2, was killed by a man in a bird mask with a shotgun. In the next episode it turned out the shotgun was loaded with riot rounds, leading several critics to call the show out for turning a game-changing twist into a total copout.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_cac20f89	comment	JAG: The 3rd season cliffhanger in "To Russia with Love", has the Mig-29 with Harm and Mac in it being hit by a missile, while the plane from the viewer’s POV was inside a cloud. In the next season resolution, in "Gypsy Eyes", we see that they managed to eject before the plane exploded.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_d56cd064	comment	Power Rangers Zeo: In the two-part premiere, "A Zeo Beginning", Part 1 ends with the Rangers asking Alpha 5 what happened to Zordon, and he indicates that something happened to him in the Command Center's implosion. At the beginning of Part 2, the same scene is played, but Alpha 5 gives a completely different response.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_d9c602eb	comment	The South Park episode "Members Only" ends with Kyle and Ike running out of the house, with their mother, Sheila, screaming after them to come back. The next episode opens with them back at home, with Sheila yelling at them. So apparently she just...ran after them and grabbed them? Seems like a bit of a letdown.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_dac2531c	comment	The two-part Baywatch Season 5 premier ended with Hobie getting into a huge fight with Mitch after nearly dying during an earthquake, and subsequently leaving to go live with his mother. He returned within the first 6 minutes of the very next episode, saying that he'd gotten over his fear of earthquakes.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_db7f8ffd	comment	The 1943 serial The Phantom is relatively honest. It makes heavy use of the kind where the cliffhanger is edited to make the situation appear more dire than it actually is, with the recap revealing that help was already on the way, or there was an escape tunnel just out of shot, or whatever. However, it always plays fair in that it only ever conceals information, never outright changes the events between chapters.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_dda2c07	comment	Bullshot spoofed this by having the hero caught in an overly complicated inescapable deathtrap, only to appear later with an equally complicated explanation of how he escaped.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_e96b932f	comment	Parodied in Made in Canada. A series of Cliffhanger events were made at the end of one season. The first episode of the next season had one of the characters, Richard, narrate that at the end of each season when a series might get cancelled, the characters are usually put on cliffhangers as a means to ensure that the series has closure, but if the series continues, it results in the authors being written into a corner as they make lame excuses. Richard then enumerates the lame excuses for the last season's cliffhanger.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_ec28245c	comment	Dragon Ball Z: Goku claims he saw a pod ship near Freeza's spaceship and took off before Freeza's spaceship hit the lava. The episode where Freeza's spaceship falls into the lava clearly shows Goku watching Freeza's ship fall into lava up in the air and then the planet explodes. Note that in the manga, that scene doesn't happen.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_ed05196	comment	Another particularly annoying one occurs in Lord Sunday. Dr Scamandros, while tending to the injured Leaf, takes his hat off. Suzy is under the impression she has died and he took it off as a sign of respect. The chapter ends there just to fool the reader into thinking the same thing.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_ef076a36	comment	Star Trek: Voyager. Lampshaded in the holodeck program The Adventures of Captain Proton! (a homage to 1930's sci-fi Film Serials) where the players gripe over how the Previously on… segment dramatically shows their rocketship bursting into flame.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_f10a65b	comment	Legends of Tomorrow One episode of Season 1 ended with a recently-Heel–Face Turn Mick Rory telling his teammates the Time Masters have now sent their deadliest agent, the Pilgrim, to eliminate the Legends not by merely killing them, but by Ret-Gone. The scene then cuts to young Mick's own past, not noticing the Pilgrim standing right behind him, ready to shoot. The next episode sees the Legends rescuing young Mick Just in Time. Season 2 ended in a Time Crash and the Waverider crash-landing in LA now besieged by dinosaurs. Season 3 is an Immediate Sequel where the Legends wander the streets, wondering how they are going to fix this mess. The Legends' former leader Rip Hunter then shows up and introduces his new organisation the Time Bureau, who promptly sends the dinosaurs back to their own time. Season 3 ended with John Constantine angrily telling the Legends off for setting Mallus free; he may have been defeated, but the gates of hell have been opened, unleashing new horrors. Season 4 began with the Legends anticipating these new threats, but nothing came, making them believe that Constantine may have just been exaggerating. However, later in the first episode, did the hell creatures start showing up, as magical creatures.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_f2041376	comment	Season 3 of Charmed (1998) ends with Piper and Prue seriously wounded and Phoebe, Leo, and Cole trapped in the underworld with Phoebe having given her oath to stay there forever. Season 4 opens with Piper and Phoebe in the attic discussing Prue's death. How did the three trapped in the underworld escape? How did Leo get home in time to save Piper? Were there any consequences for Phoebe breaking her oath? The latter two questions get some explanation at the beginning of Season 4, but the exact details of the characters' escape from the underworld itself are never made clear. The whole thing is justified in a meta-sense since Prue's actress Shannen Doherty left the show in between seasons so any plans the writers may have had were thrown out the window.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_f2046514	comment	One episode of Charmed (2018) had the girls temporarily trapped in a Prison Dimension, where they saw evidence of its demonic inhabitants escaping into our world. When they get back, Jordan rushes in and says that there's a monster outside. The next episode is filler that doesn't mention this at all.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_f42befdb	comment	From the Captain Underpants series, book 9 ends with Tippy Twinkletrousers apparently killed from being stepped on by a giant zombified student. Book 10 reveals the former left out a scene between, in which it turns out the giant zombie was so incredibly slow that Tippy had time to scream three times, go shopping, then buy a giant novelty ketchup pack and place it beneath the foot.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_f74b5f80	comment	On Babylon 5, one episode ends with Sheridan imprisoned on Mars, being psychologically tortured in an attempt to brainwash him, with no hope of rescue or escape in sight. The next episode opens with Sheridan, no worse for the wear, sitting calmly in his quarters with Dr. Franklin, sipping coffee and discussing his daring escape. Then it turns out that it's all a hallucination, and his interrogator has drugged him to the gills hoping he'll reveal valuable intelligence on the Resistance.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_fb92bc21	comment	Resident Evil: Retribution had a rather good cliffhanger Sequel Hook with the heroes teaming up with Albert Wesker (having a recent Heel–Face Turn), locking themselves up in the White House with what remained of humanity, facing down a massive horde of T-monsters under the command of the Red Queen. The Final Chapter throws all of that out of the window with a voiceover narration where it's revealed Wesker faked his redemption. The fates of the Retribution cast were only glossed over, with Alice being an only survivor again.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_fd177b01	comment	Lampshaded in J-Men Forever, which ends in a montage of Cliffhanger cop-outs, showing that the J-Men supposedly killed during the Gag Dubbed movie were all Not Quite Dead.
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Cliffhanger Copout / int_fe8ef766	comment	Captain America: Inverted in a 1960s story. At the end of one issue, our hero jumps out of a plane, wearing a parachute. At the start of the next issue, Captain America is falling through the air with no parachute (and no explanation of where the parachute went). The first few pages explain how the Captain survives this. Stan Lee later admitted that when he wrote the later issue, he had forgotten how he ended the earlier issue.
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

Cliffhanger Copout	processingCategory2	Continuity Tropes
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TheDreamJournal	seeAlso	Cliffhanger Copout
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This Day / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Book of the New Sun / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Captain Underpants / int_4debd344	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Gotrek & Felix / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
I Am Legend / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Misery / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
The Prisoner of Heaven / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
The Rolling Stones (1952) / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Wicked / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Worlds of Power / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Cliff Hanger	seeAlso	Cliffhanger Copout
CliffhangerCopOut	sameAs	Cliffhanger Copout
Convenient Semi-Friend (Manga) / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Maria no Danzai (Manga) / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Clamavi de Profundis (Music) / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Qwerpline (Podcast) / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
The Springheel Saga (Podcast) / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Between the Lions / int_4debd344	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Chuck / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Dallas / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Fear the Walking Dead / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Ghosts (US) / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Grand Hotel / int_4debd344	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Hangin' with Mr. Cooper / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Hikonin Sentai Akibaranger / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Ice Road Truckers / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
JAG / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Kamen Rider / int_4debd344	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Longmire / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Made in Canada / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Martial Law / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Mystery Science Theater 3000 / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Power Rangers Zeo / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Prison Break / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
ReBoot: The Guardian Code / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Scream Queens (2015) / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Shortland Street / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
10 Things I Hate About You / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
The IT Crowd / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
The Time Tunnel / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
The Trip / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
The Undoing / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
3rd Rock from the Sun / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Twin Peaks / int_4debd344	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Twin Peaks / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Ultraseven / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Wonder Woman (1975) / int_4debd344	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Bullshot	seeAlso	Cliffhanger Copout
Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon (Video Game) / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Call of Duty: Black Ops II (Video Game) / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Call of Duty: Ghosts (Video Game) / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Fantasian (Video Game) / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Portal 2 (Video Game) / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Splinter Cell (Video Game) / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Steppenwolf: The X-Creatures Project (Video Game) / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
The Walking Dead: Season Four (Video Game) / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Friday Night Funkin' Logic (Web Animation) / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Turnabout Storm (Web Animation) / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Patman Post (Web Video) / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
The Pop Arena (Web Video) / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Rocky and Bullwinkle / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Transformers: Rescue Bots / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Trolls: The Beat Goes On! / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
WordGirl / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
The Dark Phoenix Saga (Comic Book) / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout
Nashville / int_4dec4b64	type	Cliffhanger Copout

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