I watched movie credits long before Marvel stuck Easter eggs in them, because you never know what might happen. Case in point-1968’s Skidoo, in which the end credits were actually narrated/sung(I think by Harry Nilsson:
Skidoo (1968): 1:33:54 - 1:38:27 - YouTube
Got any other movie credits that stand out for some reason?
Airplane! has a bunch of goofy listings in the credits, including:
Also, at the end of the credits, where the boilerplate anti-piracy paragraph runs, they added the words “So there” at the end. Apparently, the FBI wasn’t amused, and contacted the directorial trio, asking them to remove those words, but by then, the film was already in wide release, and redoing the prints of the film wasn’t practical.
The Deadpool opening credits are a blast. Not just the visuals and music, but the credits, themselves. And the story of how they came to be, is, too. Due to the visuals they wanted, they had to work on them before most of the cast had been cast, so they did a mockup with descriptions, instead of the actual credits. Realizing that that was a brilliant gag, they decided to keep that - after punching it up a bit, including removing what actual credits they had to replace them with more descriptors.
Not a movie, but my favorite credit roll is at the end of a South Park episode that effectively dared the Church of Scientology to sue them. Every credit was to John or Jane Smith.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail anyone?
A moose killed my sister
Not exactly an Easter egg, and not exactly a post-scene, but Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets had all of the credits on the Marauders’ Map (which was very well-done in general, in the movie).
From IMDb:
Robocop (1987):
The standard copyright notice at the end of the film includes a warning that “This motion picture is protected under the laws of the United States and other countries and its unauthorized duplication, distribution or exhibition may result in civil liability and criminal prosecution by enforcement droids.”
My favorite credit sequence was from Diner. The credits were routine: white letters on a black screen. But instead of music, there was a conversation by the characters if the movie, presumably seated in a diner.
It is fascinating. When I first saw it, people stopped as they began to leave to hear what was being said (and this was decades before Easter eggs in movie were a thing).
I wonder who made the first attempt to keep audiences seated during the end credits. Burt Reynolds with his blooper reels?
“The Great Muppet Caper” had a nice set of opening credits. My favorite part: “Nobody reads those names, anyway, do they?” “Sure. They all have families.”
Young Sherlock Holmes (1985) had as a closing scene young Sherlock Holmes leaving London in a carriage. The closing credits play out over footage of a carriage making its way through the countryside. Then, after the credits finish rolling, there’s a post-credit cookie scene, where
We finally see the occupant of the carriage, who is not Sherlock, but the main antagonist of the film, Sherlock’s mentor who turned out to be the leader of a cult of criminals; he gets out, enters an inn, and signs into the guest book as…Moriarty!
This may be the first cinematic appearance of this sort of post-credit cookie scene, which isn’t just a gag reel or out-takes, but a continuation of the main plot, setting up the plot of the sequels (which in this case never manifested). Are there earlier examples?
At least one that I can think of, though it’s kind of a throwaway, which I was reminded of while looking up the “Crazy Credits” listing on IMDB for Airplane! (1980):
Early in the film, Ted, who’s working as a taxi driver, abandons his taxi (with the meter running) at LAX, with Howard Jarvis (who was a minor celebrity at the time) sitting in the back seat.
It seems awfully resent to have that honor, but I can’t find an earlier one. It seems there should be at least one pre-1985 slasher film where the supposedly deceased bad guy is shown to be still alive after the cedits.
I thought of the scene at the end of Flash Gordon (1980), where Ming’s ring is sitting on the ground, a gloved hand picks it up, and the closing “The End” becomes “The End?”, but I found the entire credits sequence on Youtube just now, and it turns out that that scene is before the credits, not after.
The Jim Wynorski classic Deathstalker II (1987) has a whole page of fake credits. Wynorski’s softcore cable offerings often threw in Twilight Zone names for some of the crew.
Even before that in the 1958 movie The Blob, when you see the titular Blob being parachuted into (presumably) the Antarctic, the words “The End” reform into a question mark.
They used that as a springboard for the 1972 sequel Beware the Blob, where a piece from the frozen Blob is brought back in a thermos, it’s left open, absorbs a fly that land on it, and, thus recharged, goes on a rampage. The film was directed by Larry Hagman (!) (They re-released it years later as “The film that J.R. Shot!”)
Also the 1961 Danish-American monster film Reptilicus has its “The End” appear over a foot from the creature, which has been lost due to a bombardment. It’s quivering, suggesting that the creature could regenerate from it, as the original creature regenerated from the tail.
I noticed this the very first time I saw the film in the theater – I’m a compulsive credit-reader.
Two movies that I’m aware of have spoken, rather than written credits.
The first time this happened is in Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons
The other time is the opening credits for Francois Truffaut’s version of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. The spoken credits are read over shots of TV antennae. You can see why he did it – Fahrenheit 451 is about a post-literate society, where people get their information and entertainment entirely by television. But technology has caught up with it – nowadays, you’d have to show cable TV cables, or TV dishes.
