Post-credits scene

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A post-credits scene (also called a stinger) is a short clip that appears after all or some of the closing credits of a movie have run. It is usually included for humor value or in order to set up for a possible sequel.

1 History
2 Post-credits scene films

[edit] History

Spoiler warning: Details about post-credits scenes of various movies follow.

The use of stingers may be traced back at least to 1963 and the James Bond film From Russia With Love, which was the first Bond film to show the ubiquitous "James Bond will return in..." at the end of the credits. 1978 and the movie Superman also featured a tagline promoting the film's sequel, due out the following year. However, these were simply text at the end of the credits, and did not include clips or teasers from the upcoming films.

One of the earliest appearances of a true stinger in a 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. The Muppet Movie also began a trend of using such stingers 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 often 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 Producers (in which it was not so common). The stinger of the latter movie also includes the film's only cameo appearance of producer Mel Brooks. Stingers also appeared on the long-running TV show Mystery Science Theater 3000, introduced in episode 205 ("Rocket Attack USA"), continuing until the end of the series. The stingers, with a few exceptions, highlighted moments from the films that were either particularly nonsensical or had simply caught the Brains' attention.

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, after the closing credits to Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, the cannibalistic natives are shown adopting the dog they were chasing earlier in the movie as their new chief. The Disney-animated film Aladdin: The Return of Jafar, we see Abis Mal asking for his third wish. Napoleon Dynamite features a stinger that reveals that Kip and LaFawnduh get married.

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.

Most recently, 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 Matrix Reloaded demonstrated the sequel set-up use of stingers by featuring the trailer for Matrix Revolutions.

Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace includes a stinger-like effect to tie this prequel to the later events of the original Star Wars and its first sequel. Phantom Menace's end-credit music stylistically morphs into the Imperial March (the motif of Darth Vader), and the film concludes with Vader's trademark muffled breathing, both audio elements being quite familiar to fans of the earlier films.

Some films, including Jack Black'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 film is over / but we're still on screen".