A post-credits scene (also called a tag, stinger, credit cookie, or coda) is a short clip that appears after all or some of the closing credits and sometimes after a production logo of a film, TV series or video game have run. It is usually included for humor or to set up a possible sequel.
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History
The 1903 silent film The Great Train Robbery ends with the leader of the outlaw band taking aim and firing point blank at the audience (after having been killed in the previous scene).
One of the earliest appearances of a post-credits scene in a modern mainstream film was in The Muppet Movie in 1979, and use of such scenes gained popularity throughout the 1980s at the end of comedy films. In 1980, Airplane! ended with a callback to an abandoned taxicab passenger who was not a primary character, and who had not been shown since the film's first scene. The Muppet Movie also began a trend of using such scenes to break the fourth wall, even when much of the rest of the film had kept it intact. The scenes were often used as a form of metafiction, with characters showing an awareness that they were at the end of a film, and sometimes telling the audience directly to leave the theatre. Films using this technique include Ferris Bueller's Day Off (in which the title character frequently broke the fourth wall during the movie) and the musical remake of The Producers. The post-credits scene in the latter film also includes a cameo appearance by Producers creator Mel Brooks.
Post-credits scenes also appeared on the long-running TV show Mystery Science Theater 3000, introduced in the 1990 episode Rocket Attack U.S.A., continuing until the end of the series. With few exceptions, they highlighted moments from the films that were either particularly nonsensical or had simply caught the writers' attention.
Modern film examples
Stingers lacking the metafictional aspects also gained prominence in the 1980s, although they were still primarily used for comedy films. Post-credits scenes became useful places for humorous scenes that would not fit in the main body of the film. Most were short clips that served to tie together loose ends—minor characters whose fates were not elaborated on earlier in the movie, or plotlines that were not fully wrapped up. For example, all four Pirates of the Caribbean films include such scenes. During its wide release, Napoleon Dynamite features a stinger that reveals that Kip and LaFawnduh get married. In the film The Cannonball Run, bloopers from the film are shown.
Even when post-credit scenes started to be used by films with little comedy development, the same format of giving closure to incomplete storylines or inconsequential characters remained in use. Using humor in such scenes is also still common for more serious films, as in the film Daredevil, in which Bullseye is shown after his defeat by Daredevil in a full body cast. Other films eschew the comedy in favor of a twist or revelation that would be out of place elsewhere in the movie, as in X-Men: The Last Stand's post-credits scene, where Professor X is shown to be alive. Another example is the stinger at the end of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets which features a post-memory loss Lockhart. A third example occurs in Young Sherlock Holmes: during the entire credits, Rathe is shown traveling to an Alpine inn, where he signs the register as "Moriarty".
With the rise of pre-planned movie franchises, post-credit scenes have been adopted in order to prepare the audience for upcoming sequels, sometimes going so far as to include a cliffhanger ending where the main film is largely stand-alone. The cinematic release of The Matrix Reloaded demonstrated the sequel set-up use of stingers by featuring the trailer for The Matrix Revolutions.
Some films, including Richard Linklater's School of Rock, take the idea of the post-credits scene to its limit by running the credits during the main action of the film. In this example, the characters perform a song in the last minutes of the film, and the credits run inconspicuously until one character sings the line "the movie is over/but we're still on screen".
During the credits of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, there is a scene between Professor Kirke and Lucy Pevensie, in which Kirke tells Lucy that she will return to Narnia, only not through the wardrobe.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe has made extensive use of mid- or post-credit scenes (sometimes both) which mainly, but not always, serve purpose as a teaser for one of Marvel Studios' future movies. For instance, in the post-credits scene of 2010's Iron Man 2, a large hammer at the bottom of a crater in a desert in New Mexico is shown being located by S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Coulson, thus setting up their next release, 2011's Thor, while the post-credits sequence of Captain America: The Winter Soldier introduces the characters of Pietro and Wanda Maximoff, who will go on to face and then join the Avengers in Avengers: Age of Ultron.
The credits of many Pixar films, including A Bug's Life (1998), Toy Story 2 (1999), Inside Out (2015), and Finding Dory (2016) have included comedy. Other Pixar films, such as Cars (2006) and Toy Story 3 (2010) have included an epilogue that plays during the credits.
In video games
Video games, particularly those with complex stories, also use post-credits scenes. An early example is EarthBound, in which Ness awakens to knocks on the front door just like the beginning of the game, and finds Pokey's brother Picky with a message from Pokey, indicating that he escapes and wants Ness to come and get him. Common is a scene or voiceover after the credits, of one or more characters speaking, revealing new information that gives a new perspective to the previous events as well as setting up part of the next game in the series.