This is when a season ends with a Cliffhanger that could have killed any number of the cast.
Useful because executives can then negotiate contracts with the cliffhanger in mind; i.e., "Take a pay cut or we will kill you off".
Compare Bolivian Army Ending (for the end of an entire work), Uncertain Doom (which occurs in the middle of a work or installment), and Our Hero Is Dead. If characters are revealed to have escaped from the fatal event after being shown or suggested to have been caught right in the middle of it (i.e. A bomb demolishing a building before anyone could get out), that's a Cliffhanger Copout.
Ending Trope, so beware Unmarked Spoilers.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Code Geass: The first season ends with two characters in a tense showdown and two gunshots, but doesn't show us who gets shot. And there's a massive battle to end all battles going on elsewhere. We only find out what happens in the next season, and even then, only halfway through the second season premiere.
- X/1999's last chapter before it went into a hiatus is Kamui, lying on the ground while Fuuma holds the sword above his head with the intent to stab him and asks him what is his true wish.
Films — Animation
- Played with in Toy Story 2. Woody learns that there was once a TV show starring his character. After one of the episodes ended with a cliffhanger: right in the middle of a jump across a canyon, the show was cancelled abruptly, leaving the story unfinished. However, a Meaningful Background Event later in the film implies that this was a lie by the Big Bad, and the cliffhanger was properly resolved.
Films — Live-Action
- Fast X ends with most of the team possibly killed while Dom and Brian Jr. are trapped at the base of a dam that is about to explode.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe
- Thor: Ragnarok had the shuttle full of Asgardian refugees being intercepted by a much larger ship, and the musical cue gives it an ominous presence. The next chronological film, Infinity War, reveals the larger ship to be Thanos' flagship the Sanctuary.
- Avengers: Infinity War ends with half of all life in the universe apparently being disintegrated, including half of the MCU's protagonists. How this is resolved is left to the sequel.
Literature
- The Princess Bride ends with the four main characters off their horses and surrounded by Humperdinck's army, resolved in the unfinished sequel.
- A Song of Ice and Fire has several. As the story is told from the POV of several characters, even one book can have multiple Bolivian Army Cliffhangers. From previous experience, these characters tend to survive.
- A Clash of Kings: Davos (suffers a shipwreck).
- A Feast for Crows: Arya (becomes blind) and Brienne (gets hanged).
- A Dance with Dragons: Jaime (meets Brienne, who probably wants to kill him), Daenerys (meets a Dothraki army) and especially Jon (stabbed). Daenerys' example is notable because it's effectively a Bolivian Army Cliffhanger for both sides. Dany has a ferocious, Nigh Invulnerable fire-breathing dragon on her side, after all.
Live-Action TV
- Andromeda: One season ends with two characters captured by Magog, the android impaled, the captain and first officer knocked out, and the ship having taken a miniature black hole through it. The fourth season's finale is even nastier, leaving everyone but Dylan dead or about to die. (They don't.)
- The third season of Angel ended with Angel being buried in a coffin at the bottom of the ocean. While he's already undead, so he can't technically die, the whole situation was supposed to be a Fate Worse than Death where he's trapped forever.
- Army Wives: In the first season final episode, the title characters were inside a bar when a man walked in and detonated a bomb he had strapped to him.
- Arrow: In the fifth season finale, Oliver is lured onto a boat driven by Adrian Chase, who has Oliver's son hostage, off the coast of Lian Yu. After Oliver is able to take his son back, it is revealed that the island, containing most of Oliver's allies, is rigged with explosives which will all detonate if Chase's heartbeat stops. Knowing Oliver won't kill him, he shoots himself, setting off all the explosives while leaving it unclear which members of Team Arrow survived.
- Happens quite often in Babylon 5, often as part of J. Michael Straczynski's preplanned "hooks" to remove a character from the plot if the actor decided to quit. Perhaps the most impressive was Captain Sheridan, who ended the third season finale at ground zero of two 500-megaton nuclear explosions. He came back (eventually), as did Garibaldi (variously shot, missing, disgraced). In non-finale examples, a number of characters, including Talia Winters (season 2, episode 19) and Marcus Cole (season 4, episode 20), stayed gone.
- Blake's 7:
- The second season ends with the crew launching a seemingly suicidal Delaying Action against an alien fleet. Two characters were written out: Blake and Jenna. The former returned for the next two finales, dying in the last episode. The latter was killed off-screen.
- The final episode ends with all the heroes (and we mean ALL the heroes, even ones that had been Put on a Bus in previous seasons) shot dead, apart from Avon. The final shot is him drawing his gun while he's surrounded by Federation soldiers and we then hear laser fire over the credits.
- Charmed (1998): The ending of the third season could have killed off Prue and Piper, and actually was used to kill off Prue.
- Criminal Minds:
- The third season finale does this, showing several identical black SUVs, each a destination for a pair of major characters. The episode ends with one of the SUVs, not specifically identified, exploding. Season 4's opener, however, reveals that the only casualty was the single minor character among the possible victims. Although the producers at least tried to keep the mystery alive by doing nothing to debunk (and possibly even starting) rumours that Shemar Moore or Paget Brewster was leaving the show.
- The ending of the fourth season has Hotch at gunpoint from the Boston Reaper (George Foyet). Foyet says "You should have made a deal" then a gunshot is heard and fades to black. At the start of the fifth season, it is revealed that the Reaper shoots past Hotch's head to intimidate or scare him. It doesn't work. Then they struggle and Hotch gets non-fatally stabbed multiple times by Foyet, who mirrors his own wounds he self-inflicted to draw attention away from himself in the original case.
- The sixth season also did in a less-fatal manner. Hotch's announcement that they would all given the opportunity to transfer to another division provided the writers with an easy way to right out any character they wanted. Probably a result of the statuses of three cast members as series regulars the following season still being up for grabs at the time the episode was written.
- The twelfth season finale ends with semi-truck ramming into the BAU's SUVs with them in it, leaving their fates unknown. This was used as a way to kill off a main character and was part of a larger story arc.
- The eighth season finale of CSI: Miami ends with many people in the lab and the entire main cast (minus Eric, Horatio, and Det. Tripp) collapsing to the floor, most likely from either a poison or a biochemical agent (implied by the episode to be bubonic plague, but the episode's depiction of it is Artistic License – Biology). Before the screen goes black, Eric runs up to Calleigh and begs her to breathe, implying that whatever knocked them out is quite likely fatal. According to Emily Procter herself in an interview in TV Guide, one of them is going to be dead by next season, but they won't know who until the season starts filming. The doomed member is Sixth Ranger Jesse due to a head injury; the "plague" turns out to be gas.
- CSI: NY:
- Season 5 ends with a machine gun opening fire on the entire regular cast, who were gathered in a bar to remember a colleague who'd been killed. The next season reveals that Danny has lost the use of his legs and the shooters attacked the bar at random.
- Season 6 ends with Danny at the mercy of a Serial Killer (who had just hours before experienced a Disney Villain Death and they hadn't found the body yet) who's holding his daughter hostage. The screen goes black, then there's a gunshot. Fired by Lindsay, as revealed at the beginning of the new season.
- The unresolved second season/series finale of Dark Angel, which may be considered an unintentional Bolivian Army Ending.
- Desperate Housewives has done this with the last three November sweeps. In 2007, a tornado hit the street, and the episode ended with Lynette screaming narmily while the camera pulled back and showed a devastated street. In 2008, everyone just happened to be at the same bar when it burned down, and in 2009, everyone just happened to be in the same yard when an airplane fell out of the sky. The show's executives always try to get some hype going by saying that, yes, for sure, someone you care about has died. And it always ends up being a minor character.
- The fifth season of Dynasty (1981) ended with a terrorist attack on a wedding (long story) and everyone apparently dead. The first episode of the sixth season was one of the highest rated episodes in that show's history. The resolution was that a couple of secondary characters introduced only in the fifth season got killed.
- Just about every season ending from the later years of ER. Early seasons usually ended with some sense of closure (e.g. Carter's graduation). But then: Season 8 has four of the regulars locked inside during an apparent breakout of smallpox; 9 leaves Luka's fate unknown; 10 has the shootout while Chen and Pratt are in the car with Elgin; 12 has another shooting, this time inside the hospital; 13 has the stampede and 14 the explosion.
- The Flash (2014): The first season ends with an anomaly created due to the time paradox of Eddie's Heroic Suicide which keeps Eobard Thawne from being born and Barry rushes to try and stop it before the thing destroys all of Central City.
- Game of Thrones indeed took a leaf out from the source materials in using this trope for the season finales:
- Season 2: Samwell Tarly comes face-to-face with a White Walker and the army of Wights. The next season reveals that he narrowly escaped from them and fortunately met his Night's Watch brothers.
- Season 5: Daenarys, surrounded by a Dothraki horde without Drogon; Jaime, holding the dying Myrcella in his arms after being poisoned by Ellaria Sand while en route to King's Landing; Theon and Sansa, fleeing from Ramsey Bolton by jumping off the castle walls of Winterfell; Brienne, killing Stannis after his defeat from the Boltons and Jon Snow, lying on the snow and dying after his Night's Watch brothers betrayed him.
- Season 7: Tormund and Beric try to run away as the undead Viserion destroys the entire Eastwatch outpost, which gives way for the White Walkers to breach the way and march into the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros.
- Grey's Anatomy:
- The fifth season ends with both Izzy and George flatlining. Izzy survives, George doesn't.
- The eighth season ends with Meredith, Christina, Mark, Lexie, Arizona and Derek in a plane crash. Averted with Lexie, who dies in that episode. In the next season, Mark is in a coma, and eventually dies.
- The end of the ninth season finale has Richard passed out in the dark.
- The twenty-first season ends with an explosion on the OR floor.
- In The Guardian's second season cliffhanger, James is brutally shot by a client and left to die. The resolution is a nasty fake-out: Nick sees the client leave and realizes something's up, but he's too late to help James.
- Home and Away has pulled this a few times:
- 2003: Rhys, Kirsty, Jade and Max are trapped down a mine shaft which then caves in on them.
- 2008: A car containing Kane, Annie and Jai crashes into a hall where several other characters are attending the school formal, while at the same time Jack gets accidentally shot.
- 2013: A bomb planted in Bianca's bag goes off at the hospital with several people in the blast area, while Kyle, Evie and Oscar have been left locked in a shipping crate.
- 2014: A bus containing several of the Summer Bay residents crashes after a near collision with a car containing Nate and his wife Sophie.
- 2016: A bushfire started by John (who turns out to have a brain tumour causing blackouts) threatens an open-air concert several of the characters are attending, while at the same time Justin gets stabbed by his parents' killer.
- 2019: A number of the residents are held hostage by gunmen at the hospital, stopping Bella getting help after an overdose, Mason gets shot, and Colby and Dean sneak in to try and help them.
- 2022: Felicity and Eden drive off in a vehicle whose brakes have been sabotaged.
- 2023: Remi is knocked off his bike and, when Eden stumbles across the scene, the driver responsible takes them both prisoner intending to dispose of them.
- 2025: A train carrying several of the Summer Bay crowd is derailed and overturned in a tunnel after being obstructed by some teenagers doing graffiti.
- Homicide: Life on the Street has a mid-season story arc in which three characters are shot. All three ultimately survive — but at the beginning of the next season, two of those same three have been reassigned, as if the shooting was originally meant as a season-ending cliffhanger but was rearranged at the 11th hour.
- JAG: Season 3 ends with Rabb and Mac's plane being hit by a missile behind a cloud, possibly killing these two main characters.
- Jeopardy (CBBC): The end of Series 1, which has the group being abducted by aliens as they wait on the ridge to be rescued by helicopter.
- Jericho (2006): The first season finale ends with a Smash to Black as a firefight involving most of the major characters begins. This may have contributed to the uproar in response to the cancellation of the series at the end of the first season, as many of the devoted fans did not know the fate of their favorite characters.
- The fifth season of Lost ends with a hydrogen bomb potentially detonating in proximity to at least eight of the main characters. Of course, they have a better chance of surviving if it detonates than the alternative. Really.
- Made in Canada plays this straight at the end of the second season, and casually dumps the lame survival excuses at the beginning of the next season.
- The ninth season of NCIS ends with a car bomb going off right outside NCIS headquarters with everyone except Vance, Ducky, and Palmer inside. Gibbs, McGee, and Abby are all near windows when the blast hits, and Tony and Ziva are trapped in an elevator. Then the scene cuts to Ducky walking along a beach when he gets a call telling him about the bombing, and his instructions to the medical staff are cut short when he collapses from a heart attack. Apart from McGee getting hit with some glass, none of the main cast is hurt, and both he and Ducky recover.
- Neighbours has been doing this consistently since the 90s (note that other years feature lives endangered, just not more than one):
- 1992: Beth and Hannah trapped in a burning cottage, while Cameron, for unrelated reasons, was being held over an open elevator shaft.
- 1993: Gaby and Annalise in a plane crash.
- 1998: Karl and Joel in a flood, with Joel's leg trapped under a car.
- 1999: Drew and Lolly being pulled out of a burning house, both injured.
- 2000: Joe trapped in his taxi during a bushfire with a passenger about to go into labour.
- 2004: The Lassiters complex is set on fire with Stu and Sindi trapped in the pub, while Max is knocked out by an explosion.
- 2007: The roof collapses on an illegal dance party at which many of the characters are present.
- 2008: Libby, Zeke and Bridget missing during a rafting trip, when their raft is capsized by a prank.
- 2010: Summer and Andrew trapped in a fire, as Natasha and Michael s attempt to rescue them (in the same house as 1999!).
- New Amsterdam (2018): The first season finale ends with a massive car accident between two ambulances that left the fates of Georgia, Bloom, and Sharpe unknown. It was revealed in the second season's opening episode that Sharpe and Bloom survived the accident while Georgia did not.
- Outrageous Fortune has an uncharacteristic one at the very end of the fifth season. Zane Gerard fires gunshots at either Cheryl or Pascalle, himself having just been fatally stabbed with a broken bottle; viewers had to wait until the next season to see who, if anyone, survived. This was because the lead actors were engaged in aggressive negotiations with the production, and it was not clear which of them would be returning.
- Oz did this twice. The first season ends with National Guard troops forcing their way into the cell block to end the riot, firing live ammunition at random. The fourth season ends with an accidental gas explosion in the kitchens.
- The finale to the first series of Psychoville had the majority of the main cast gathered in an abandoned mental hospital by the villain, who too was there, and strapped with explosives. Cue massive explosion... which the viewers see occur from outside. We are left to theorize who, if anyone, survived.
- Reno 911! did this twice. The first season ending with a shootout that leaves everybody apparently dead (it was All Just a Dream the next season). Season 5 ends with the deputies' parade float careening into a building that then explodes, this time three of them didn't come back.
- Robin Hood (BBC): Series 3 ends with Nottingham Castle being blown up and Gisbourne, Isabella and Sheriff Vaisey are all apparently dead too. (It's somewhat invalid considering the show was cancelled).
- Saturday Night Live once parodied this at the end of the 11th season. The whole cast save Jon Lovitz was trapped in a burning building to explain away any potential cast changes the next year.note
- The first series of Sherlock ends with pointing a gun at a bomb, threatening to blow John Watson, and Moriarty and himself up.
- Skins: Series 1 ends with Tony being hit by a bus — then the entire cast (including Tony) bursts into singing Cat Stevens' "Wild World". Series 4 even went further than that and ended with Cook desperately rushing at the John Foster to avenge Freddie's death.
- Smallville:
- The third season ends with Clark being up and away, his father in a coma, Lana off to Paris, Chloe apparently blown up, Lionel knifed and Lex poisoned.
- Actually, pretty much every season has this: The first season ends with Clark and Lana sucked up into a tornado, Lex and Lionel in a collapsing building, Jonathan running out into a storm and Martha menaced by a floating spaceship. By the time of the fifth season cliffhanger (Clark trapped in the Phantom Zone, Lex possessed by Zod and making out with an oblivious Lana, Martha and Lois trapped on a crashing plane, and Chloe and Lionel being attacked by a mob that just springs up out of nowhere because there's been a power cut), it was starting to get a bit silly.
- The first season of Stargate Atlantis ends with a Wraith invasion fleet on the verge of overrunning Atlantis, Sheppard taking a puddlejumper to attempt a suicide attack with a nuclear warhead against one of the Hive Ships, Ford thrown overboard by a grenade blast, Colonel Everett fed on by a Wraith, and Dr. Weir activating the city's Self-Destruct Mechanism.
- The first season of Stargate Universe' ends with most of the crew, including Young, in Lucian Alliance hands. Only Rush, Brody, Eli, and Chloe remain free.
- The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Best of Both Worlds (Part 1)" ends this way, with the Enterprise's Wave-Motion Gun aimed at Picard and the Borg cube that assimilated him, with Riker giving the order to open fire. This coincided nicely with rumours that Patrick Stewart might be quitting, making for a very tense summer.
- Supernatural is fond of these for their season finales:
- Season 1: John and the boys have just been in a nasty car accident. We see them in the destroyed car, but don't know if they are alive or dead until the season 2 premiere.
- Season 3: Dean is killed by hellhounds, and his soul is sent to Hell, leaving his future uncertain. Overlaps with Downer Ending.
- Season 4: Castiel is facing off an archangel, said to be one of the most powerful entities in existence, and Sam and Dean are faced with Lucifer rising from his cage.
- Season 6: Castiel gives the boys an ultimatum: bow down and swear their love to him, their new Lord God, or be destroyed.
- Season 7: Castiel and Dean just killed Dick Roman, but are dragged along with his soul into the dimensional realm of Purgatory, where the soul of every monster that ever lived hunt for all eternity. Sam is left completely alone back on Earth, which is now a battleground for the remaining Leviathans and Crowley's demon army.
- Season 8: Sam collapses in agony, apparently dying, as a result of trying and failing to close the Gates of Hell. Meanwhile, Castiel is stripped of his Grace and dumped somewhere in the wild as Metatron casts every angel out of Heaven.
- Season 9: Dean dies, with the last scene showing coming back as a demon.
- Season 10: Dean is cured of the Mark of Cain but this winds up freeing the Darkness, and he and Sam take cover in the Impala while it spreads over the entire area. Meanwhile, Castiel ends up Brainwashed and Crazy by Rowena and ends up trying to kill Crowley.
- Twin Peaks:
- The first season ends with Jacques Renault and Leo Johnson, the prime suspects in the killing of Laura Palmer, seemingly murdered, Audrey is over her head at One Eyed Jack's about to be forced to sleep with her own father, Shelly, Catherine, and Pete Martell all about to perish in a burning building, and Cooper with a gun to his chest. The second season figures out how to resolve this early on.
- The second season ends with major characters killed by Wyndam Earle and the hero, Agent Cooper, trapped in the Black Lodge, while the series' villain takes over his body ready to commit further atrocities. Undoing this is the main plotline of the third season.
- Warrior Nun: The first season ends with the nuns confronting a huge crowd of people controlled by Adriel's wraith demons in the Vatican, with the last shots being of Mary getting overwhelmed.
- One series of Waterloo Road ended with a bus crashing into all the cast heading up to Scotland. Who lives and dies isn't revealed until the next series.
- The West Wing: The end of the first season had gunfire opened on the regular cast and a crowd, with the last lines being "Who's been hit? Who's been hit?". Ironically, they did fire Mandy, but she was "put on a bus to Mandyville" with no further mention whatsoever, also known as Chuck Cunningham Syndrome, rather than using the shooting as an explanation.
- World on Fire: The first series ends with Harry and Kasia's attempt to escape Poland with the Polish Resistance rumbled. The resistance cell are massacred, and Harry and Kasia are fleeing up a hill surrounded, outgunned and outnumbered.
Manhwa
- Veritas, scheduled to have a second part to the story, ends with the lead starting a fight with Vera, the closest thing the series has to a Big Bad, having just awoken Yuri, the closest thing the series has to a Sealed Evil in a Can in order to get the 11th-Hour Superpower he needs to fight the first one. The last time he fought anyone he was not yet ready to fight Vera.
Video Games
- DRIV3R ends with Tanner flatlining after being shot by the Big Bad's Last Breath Bullet. A doctor seems to be getting a defibrillator ready, but the whole thing wasn't resolved until years later in Driver: San Francisco.
- The mission "Of Their Own Accord" in Modern Warfare 2 ends with the US Army Rangers boarding a Blackhawk to cover the evacuation of civilians from a warzone. After gunning down multiple Russian gunners, the helicopter is shot down, and your character, Pvt. Ramirez, wakes up inside the wreckage as Russian troops are closing in, you run out of ammo, and Cpl. Dunn gets shot. The next few mission takes place on the other side of the world, with an entirely different protagonist. Then we are sent back to Ramirez, Foley, and Dunn, who thanks to the timely actions of the other protagonist and his squad, survives.
- Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War sorta pulls this off. After the Battle of Belhalla it is given that with a few exceptions in which characters are indisputably dead, the fates of the rest of the playable cast are unknown to varying degrees. Supplementary material only give so much information, and most of these characters are still unaccounted for. Of course, this isn't the end of the game, as the entire playable cast thus far was just a decoy...
- The first The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel game ends with the protagonist being forced to flee from a losing battle while the rest of his comrades stay to give him the time to run. Cold Steel II reveals that they're all saved after the protagonist leaves, but they end up scattered across the country after their own escape.
- Episode 4 of The Walking Dead (Telltale) Season Two ends with the survivors in a Mexican Standoff between another Russian group. Rebecca starts to turn, causing either Clementine or Kenny to shoot her, then the Russian group opens fire. Smash to Black. No one in Clem's group dies in the ensuing battle, but Luke gets grazed in the leg, which proves to be his doom later on.
- At the end of XIII, the conspirator's identity is revealed and the hero is left in a potentially deadly situation. It was never resolved in game form because the developers wanted that to happen; in the original comic book, the Mongoose is still alive and Walter Sheridan lets XIII live to avoid another conspiracy and since XIII has no evidence against Sheridan anyways. There also wasn't much more to do in terms of gameplay, nor satisfying plot, so the game was purposely ended there.
Web Animation
- Episode 6 of "Murder Drones" ends with V making a last stand against the anti-drone sentinels, cutting to credits just before the final blow is struck.
- Season 13 of Red vs. Blue ends with the Red and Blues aboard the Staff Of Charon, barricaded in the trophy room and ready to fight the Space Pirates that are cutting through the door. Epsilon takes advantage of his faster perception of time to record a message for them, explaining that he needs to deconstruct himself in order to give them the power they need to win (effectively killing himself). Just as the action is about to start up, Epsilon fragments and the episode ends.
Web Comics
- Guilded Age: End of Chapter 8. Which was also the end of act one. Turns out they are killed, but a couple chapters later they come back.
- Unsounded: The last scene in Grenzlan in Book I shows Lemuel injured and surrounded by quickly approaching foes with his allies all dead. Ashley confirmed that the battle would not be visited again, and that readers would have to imagine what happened next, though Lemuel's fate will likely be revealed in Book II given its setting.
Web Original
- Both the Season 1 and Season 2 finales of We're Alive. "The War" ended with the Tower besieged by the Mallers and Zombies. "The Harder They Fall" ended with the Tower crew fleeing the wreckage of the Tower on a helicopter headed for the unknown and leaving behind several of their comrade who they believed to be dead.
Western Animation
- The Amazing World of Gumball: Season 6 ends on a shot of Rob falling into the void with the rest of the cast's fates being unknown.
- Beast Wars:
- Season One ends with the alien Vok about to scorch the entire planet. The last shot of the episode is Optimus exploding in space while Megatron rallies his troops for a final assault against the Maximals.
- In one of the more completely awesome moments of the series, the second season ended up with Megatron messing up the whole of reality by shooting THE Optimus Prime in the head!!
- Final Space: At the end of season one, KVN is killed, while Gary, Quinn, Little Cato, Tribore and Shannon have uncertain fates that certainly do not look like they have good odds of a positive outcome.
- The seventh and final episode of Free For All ended with a crazed gunman firing wildly at the main cast, who are offscreen, with no indication of which of them survived.
- The first season of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2002) reboot ends with all the heroic Masters captured and imprisoned, leaving only Prince Adam (without his Sword of Power) to defend Castle Grayskull against Skeletor, all his henchmen, and nearly every single villain from the entire season.
- King of the Hill: Season 2 ends with a propane explosion that causes Mega Lo Mart to catch fire while Hank, Luanne and Buckley still inside.
- The beginning of season 3 reveals that only Buckley died.
- Metalocalypse Season 2 ends with Charles Offdensen brutalized by the Metal Masked Assassin albeit Dethklok prevents him from finishing him off, leaving it uncertain if he is dead or not. Most of the Season 3 premiere plays it off as him actually dying at first (complete with a Really Dead Montage) ,but it's revealed at the end that he did survive the encounter...sort of, it's complicated.
- Skull Island (2023): The first season ends with Annie back in her long-lost mother Irene's custody and at a hospital after having been in a two-week coma. Meanwhile, the last we saw of fellow human leads Charlie and Mike back on the titular Isle of Giant Horrors was the former being attacked by an angry native, and the latter being poisoned.
- The first season of Star Wars: Clone Wars ends with a handful of Jedi holding out against an army of Battle Droids and the newly introduced General Grievous. The second season actually picks up a couple minutes later. Four Jedi survived the initial ambush, and holed up where the Droid army couldn't touch them. General Grievous killed one more Jedi before Ki-Adi-Mundi single-handedly stalled long enough for reinforcements to arrive and save his surviving friends.
- A particularly frustrating example in the finale of Total Drama World Tour: After Chris' final challenge results in the volcano erupting, the contestants are seen swimming away from Hawaii as giant flaming boulders rain down upon them, Alejandro is seen alive in The Stinger, but it is left unknown whether or not the other twenty-four contestants managed to survive.
- They all survived, even Ezekiel.
- Transformers: Prime has one for the season 2 finale, while most of the Autobots are scattered to the winds, Optimus is caught in the destruction of their base, and the last we see of him is his arm sticking out of the wreckage.