What's After the Credits?

This weekend I finally took my girlfriend to see Where the Wild Things Are. We both quite liked the film, but as the closing credits dragged on I could see my girlfriend was getting fidgety. I am a compulsive credit-watcher, and she is not. I like to see all the weird little credits (you know, all the hippo trainers, sweat applicators and wig wranglers). Besides, you never know when they're gonna sneak some extra scene in there, after the credits!

The post-credits sequence apparently began with The Muppet Movie in 1979, and over the years they've become increasingly common. Sometimes those scenes are just goofy little things that don't matter, but sometimes they're the real ending of the film, the part where you find out the villain's not dead or the monkey had the microfilm all along or the leading lady is really a dude. You leave that theater to soon, and you risk missing that moment when the psycho killer's decayed hand bursts forth from his grave, showing you that the nightmare isn't over.

The folks at the What's After the Credits? wiki are just as obsessed with post-credits scenes as I am, and they provide an online database of those sneaky sequences that filmmakers love to tack onto the end of movies. The site is apparently still rather new, but there are already plenty of movies cataloged. Thanks to their hard work, filmgoers of the future won't have to sit through the closing credits of Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus in agonized anticipation, waiting for a post-credit sequence that will never come.


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