TV Shows With Secret Post-Credits Scenes
Post-credits scenes are extra-special Easter eggs for film fans who have the patience to sit through the long list of people who worked hard on the movie they just watched. All of a sudden, the white-text-on-black-screen ends, and there's a short scene—usually something fun related to the plot of the movie, like Ferris Bueller in Ferris Bueller's Day Off telling the audience to "go home," or Nick Fury trying to recruit Tony Stark into the Avengers at the tail end of Iron Man. They're big at the movies, but post-credit scenes, or "stingers," have also been a part of TV for years. Here are some shows that rewarded fans for not changing the channel.
Legion
Noah Hawley's mind-bending FX series is based in the world of the X-Men, with its super-powered mutants and mysterious organizations. It's technically a Marvel property, and like many of its big-screen brethren, it's used a post-credits scene to tantalizingly hint at important future developments.
By the end of the eighth and final installment of the first season, David (Dan Stevens) has discovered he's an extraordinarily powerful mutant who can do amazing things with his brain. He aligns himself with the good guys, and everything wraps up nicely. So where can season 2 go from there? A little smaller, it would seem: In Legion's post-credits scene, David is miniaturized and kidnapped by a drone.
The Walking Dead
Like the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, AMC's The Walking Dead is based on comic books, and in 2014 and 2015, the zombie drama took the MCU route with post-credits sequences that teased future plot developments—as well as the triumphant return of a character viewers justifiably thought was long gone.
In the early days of the zombie apocalypse, Rick (Andrew Lincoln) befriended Morgan (Lennie James), a sad and broken man trying to survive while coping with tremendous loss. Morgan surprisingly resurfaced in season 3, when—having apparently suffered a mental break—he tried to shoot Rick, Carl, and Michonne from a roof when the trio was on on a supply run.
Flash forward to the first episode of season 5. After the credits roll, the action resumes with a masked, hooded man walking through the woods with purpose. The man dramatically removes his hood and mask and...it's Morgan. After the mid-season finale, Morgan re-appeared in yet another stinger, coming across the school and church where Rick's group had been staying, discovering he was on Rick's trail by finding Abraham's note reading, "Come to Washington. The world's gonna need Rick Grimes."
Magnum, P.I.
Still one of the most-watched TV series finales of all time, the 1988 conclusion of Magnum, P.I. dutifully hit all the bases for a hit show's farewell. Series-long mysteries wrapped up, nostalgic montages played, and Thomas Magnum (Tom Selleck) was reunited with Lily, his long-lost daughter. Along the way, Magnum decided to rejoin the Navy, and after the credits rolled, the episode concluded with Lily walking down the beach alongside Magnum in his Navy dress whites. End of the post-credits sequence, end of the show? Nope. The image of Magnum and Lily on the beach pulls out to show Magnum, in uniform, watching himself and Lily on a TV set. Then he turns off the TV, faces the camera, says "goodnight," and clicks a remote. Now it's the end of the show.
Battlestar Galactica
Lots of shows finish up their time each week with what's called a "vanity card." It's usually a funny image bearing the name of the show's chief production company or producer. (Famous example: Ubu Productions made Family Ties, and the card depicted producer Gary David Goldberg's dog, Ubu Roi.)
The 2000s Battlestar Galactica series ended with a sequence that was something between a vanity card and a post-credits scene—five-second animated sequences depicting the show's creators, Ronald D. Moore and David Eick, getting brutally murdered. Real people stood in front of a green screen as body doubles for Moore and Eick; animator Jerry Hultsch added the creators' heads and did his worst, using his artistic palette to mutilate his bosses however he saw fit.
Hannibal
NBC's stylish and engrossing series about cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter seemed to have ended quite definitively with its third season finale: frenemies Hannibal (Mads Mikkelsen) and FBI profiler Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) fought to the death, tumbling down a rocky seaside cliffs to their deaths. Or maybe at least one of them survived the fall, as a post-credits scene suggests. Viewers were left with an image of Hannibal's psychiatrist and enabler, Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier (Gillian Anderson) sitting at a table set for dinner. Presumably she's waiting for Hannibal, because dinner is Bedelia's leg, roasted up and ready to serve.
The Venture Brothers
Nearly every episode of this bonkers Adult Swim animated sci-fi comedy comes with an extra ending scene. A little more than the brief stinger or random joke other shows go out with, The Venture Brothers offers up one last bit of twisted comedy that feels more like an unused scene from the episode that the creators just couldn't bear to completely delete, probably because they're full of good jokes and character-defining moments.
Take, for example, the post-credits sequence after the episode "Assisted Suicide." Dr. Venture tells Hank about his 16th birthday celebration—a pool party thrown by his father that involved Playboy bunnies, prostitutes, and being shot in the crotch with a shrink ray. (No wonder he turned out to be a mad scientist.)
Mystery Science Theater 3000
Only after nearly two hours of making fun of bad movies, plus some interstitial sketches and one final segment, did the jokes stop on MST3K. Until they didn't!
Starting with the season 2 episode "Rocket Attack USA," Mystery Science Theater 3000 ended with a very brief post-credits extra. Generally just a few seconds long, the bit was usually a replay of a particularly funny line from the material skewered in that episode, but there was the occasional exception—for instance, a season 5 stinger paid tribute to the late Frank Zappa, a big MST3K fan. The tradition was continued for the Netflix revival of the series.
Mr. Robot
Keeping the twists, turns, secret alliances, and characters' true identities straight on Mr. Robot is head-spinning enough without having a post-credits scene call everything into question. But after the conclusion of the show's first season finale, a three-minute stinger aired.
Whiterose (B.D. Wong), affiliated with a dangerous Chinese hacking group, attends a fancy party and meets with the show's ostensible villain, E Corp CEO Philip Price (Michael Cristofer). They even discuss who's responsible for the season's climactic hack that destroyed so much of the world's financial systems. Along with some small talk and ominous, possibly foreshadowing allusions to the burning of Rome, Price mentions that his people will "handle the person" who orchestrated the hack. It was a shocking twist—so shocking that the last episode of Mr. Robot's second season simply had to include a post-credits scene as well.