As My Hero Academia's sixth season goes on, reveals are continuously dropped in exciting ways, such as Dabi's reveal as Touya Todoroki. However, many of these reveals are told in the episode, not presented as a shocking post-credit scene twist that would make the Marvel Cinematic Universe proud. Usually, anime doesn't really do the whole post-credit scene.
Especially in anime, where the ending theme is often more easygoing than the opening, viewers lulled into a false sense of security are easily shocked by one final plot revelation or even a scare. Viewers aren't likely to forget these endings in a hurry.
Attack On Titan
In the popular dystopian series, humans live in fear of giant, man-eating Titans, and constructed walls around the last remnants of their population to protect themselves. After one wall was destroyed by the Colossal Titan and its people massacred by a horde of normal Titans, survivor Eren Jaeger swore to rid the world of them forever.
With all the action in the first season’s finale, anime-only fans weren’t at all expecting another shock. But one was waiting for them at the end of the credits: remember the walls that protect humanity from Titans? One cracks open, revealing that inside them are more Colossal Titans that could wake up at any time. The lengthy wait for a second season made this reveal even more harrowing.
Angel Beats!
This show brings viewers some of the saddest moments in isekai anime, so of course the final episode pulls out the big guns. When they’re the last souls remaining in the afterlife, Otonashi confesses his love for Kanade and asks her to stay there with him. But Kanade reveals she was the one who received his donated heart after his death and thanks him. She disappears, having fulfilled her last wish, leaving Otonashi a wreck.
When the credits start, viewers are left wondering whether it could really end there, there’s one more moment. Two teenagers resembling Otonashi and Kanade pass each other on the street, and the boy, feeling familiarity, turns and reaches out to the girl… then the show ends, leaving their fates in their new lives uncertain.
Samurai Champloo
This show isn’t normally given to jump scares, but at the end of the episode “Cosmic Collisions,” it uses the normally incredibly relaxing ending theme tune to trick any viewers sticking around into letting their guards down…before a monstrous rotting corpse bursts out of the ground and right at the camera.
The corpse is Shige, a delusional zombie who believed himself a member of the ancient Heike clan, ended the episode being blown to bits, having summoned a meteor down on himself and everyone around him. Admittedly, it doesn't make much sense, which may be why fans don't exactly look at this episode kindly.
Puella Magi Madoka Magica
This show is dedicated to bashing the viewer over the head with as many shocking twists and turns as possible. So it really shouldn’t be surprising that it slips one more in even after it appears everything’s been bittersweetly wrapped up. Homura walks in a desert with strange blank beings behind her, the only magical girl left unhappy after Madoka's wish.
Witchlike wings sprout from her back, and, following Madoka's voice, she shoots off into the sky. The world is enveloped in darkness, and the final shots are of the main cast and a single Soul Gem. Fans would have to wait two more years (or four, for those who had to wait for the DVD and English dub) to find out what on Earth it all meant in Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion.
Boruto: Naruto The Movie
This long-running sequel series features the children of some of the strongest Naruto characters proving to match or even surpass the parents they resemble so much. However, one young shinobi sticks out from his peers: pale, quiet, snake-eyed Mitsuki.
He is a mystery throughout the entire movie, despite being Boruto and Sarada’s teammate. It’s only revealed in the post-credits scene that his parent from the original series is…Orochimaru! Some fans may have guessed from his appearance, but it’s still shocking to hear that the villain known for murdering children all over the first anime has mellowed out enough to have a child of his own and send him to be trained in the Leaf Village.
The End of Evangelion
While many fans maintain that Rebuild of Evangelion has the better films (and perhaps even a more shocking post-credits scene), The End of Evangelion still stands as one of the best and most brain-melting movies of all time. And while this doesn't even break the top ten weirdest things about it, this is one of the only movies out there to have its full credits, not at its end, but smack in the middle.
This means that instead of a post-credits scene that only lasts a few moments, End of Evangelion's entire second half technically constitutes the post-credits scene. From sudden live-action sequences to all of humanity dissolving into orange goo, there are plenty of shocking moments for viewers to pick from.
JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure
Because it spans multiple parts and multiple generations, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure does this a lot to ease fans into the next shift in characters and storylines. However, the most shocking to first-time viewers comes from the final episode of Battle Tendency, which took fans from noble hero Jonathan’s very personal struggle against his nemesis Dio to brash and crude Joseph’s fight to save the world from an ancient evil.
With such a 180-degree twist in tone and character, fans felt sure that not much from Phantom Blood would make it into the next parts. The post-credits scene of oblivious sailors pulling Dio’s coffin up from the depths, revealing he survived Jonathan’s heroic sacrifice and will be showing back up in Part 3 to torment the Joestar family some more, proved them solidly wrong.
Baccano!
The many storylines of Baccano! are highly affected by the powers of immortality several characters are gifted. The originals received it from a draught obtained through a demon deal (long story) that is recreated and passed onto additional characters throughout the show. These include the lovers Isaac and Miria, but the two don't realize they've stopped aging.
They continue not to for over seventy years until the post-credits scene shows them in New York City suddenly realizing that they don't look any different...and concluding that they're constantly being reborn. Even if the most shocking thing about it is that known airheads Isaac and Miria had a moment of self-awareness, seeing the cheerful couple again is still a welcome surprise.
Aldnoah.Zero
In the first episode, Mars' princess Asseylum is the apparent victim of an assassination, engineered by her own people. But after the end card of the episode "The Children's Echelon," Slaine, Asseylum's loyal bodyguard and one of Kensho Ono's best characters, realizes that Asseylum is still alive and rushes to report it to his superior Trillham.
Trillham, too furious and disdainful of Slaine to realize the danger of doing so, angrily admits that he was part of the plot and intends to kill Asseylum himself to keep it covered up. Thus far, Slaine has been deferential to the Martians who mistreat him for his Earth heritage, so seeing him steal Trillham's gun and shoot him dead to protect Asseylum is both shocking and an indication of what he'll do in the future for her sake.
My Hero Academia
My Hero Academia’s fourth season covered multiple arcs, from the fight against the Shie Hassaikai yakuza group to Class 1-A’s next internships with pro heroes. Anime-only fans would be forgiven for thinking that Izuku, Bakugou, and Todoroki joining up with Endeavor was the only shock the final episode would bring. However, after Izuku falls asleep and the credits roll, his dreams provide one more.
Viewers already knew that Izuku inherited his Quirk from All Might, who inherited it himself from Nana Shimura. But when Izuku is visited in a dream by the first seven holders of One For All, it not only introduces new characters but the idea that they can help Izuku evolve the already-powerful Quirk even further. Anime-onlies were left to wait in earnest for the next season to see where this would go.