When the end of Spider-Man: Brand New Day arrives, moviegoers in the theater know they should stay in their seats because it’s Marvel tradition to insert a small treat after the credits. In the case of the superhero franchise, it’s often a teaser for other multiverse stories, the resolution of something left unfinished, or simply a joke. By definition, a post-credits scene is the fragment that appears during or after the long roll of names of the cast and crew behind a film, and it is used across genres such as horror, animation, and action.
Although there is a popular association of this cinematic device with this series of films, its origins go back to long before Kevin Feige, the president of Marvel Studios, was born. The first, by historians’ consensus, was in The Silencers (1966), starring Dean Martin, where it was hinted that there would be a sequel featuring his character, Matt Helm. Earlier, in 1963, the James Bond film From Russia with Love — the second in the series — included text after the credits announcing “James Bond will return,” but it was not a sequence as such.
The purpose of the device can vary: to announce a continuation explicitly or with a hint, to give a comic send-off to a supporting character, to encourage audiences to watch the credits, or — most commonly today — to generate anticipation and conversation. For example, in Finding Dory (2016) the fish from the first film, Finding Nemo, reappear at the end still trapped in plastic bags, a gag that only viewers of the original will get. In Annabelle: Creation (2017), the final scene provides information about the next installment, The Nun (2018), and in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), when the monkey touches a gold coin and turns into a skeleton, it implies the curse is still active.
Marvel first used the device in Iron Man (2008) when, in a brief sequence, the character Nick Fury unexpectedly appears at the protagonist Tony Stark (Iron Man)’s house to tell him he’s not the only superhero in the world and to talk about The Avengers. Two years later, at the end of the film’s sequel, a crater appears in a desert with a strange object that teases the arrival of Thor’s hammer. Since then it has become a custom audiences enjoy and a prompt for speculation about the superhero universe.
Five post-credits scenes beyond Marvel
The Muppets (1979). After Sweetums bursts through the movie screen, the credits roll and the characters chat among themselves while seated in their theater seats. At the end, Animal breaks the fourth wall and yells at the audience: “Go home!”
Airplane! (1980). At the start of the film, the protagonist Ted Striker, a taxi driver, drops a customer off in his vehicle at the airport entrance and asks him to wait a minute. The film unfolds and Striker never returns. In the post-credits scene the man, still waiting and furious, says he’ll only wait “20 more minutes.”
Young Sherlock Holmes (1985). During the credits, a man arrives at a boarding house and signs the guest register under the surname Moriarty, suggesting the villain from the film is still alive and foreshadowing the origin of Sherlock Holmes’s great adversary.
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986). As in The Muppets, the protagonist Ferris Bueller, played by Matthew Broderick, addresses the audience to say the movie is over and they should go home.
Toy Story 2 (1999). During and after the credits there are “outtakes” of the film’s characters as if they were real actors. Post-credits scenes are common in Pixar productions, as in WALL·E or A Bug’s Life.
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