thumb|The 1914 film serial [[The Perils of Pauline (1914 serial)|Perils of Pauline was shown in bi-weekly installments and ended with a cliffhanger.]]
A cliffhanger or cliffhanger ending is a plot device in fiction which features a main character in a precarious situation, facing a difficult dilemma or confronted with a shocking revelation at the end of an episode of serialized fiction or before a commercial break in a television programme. A cliffhanger is intended to incentivize the audience to return to see how the characters resolve the dilemma, or to provide a mysterious or thought provoking ending.
Some serials end with the caveat, "To Be Continued" or "The End?" In serial films and television series, the following episode sometimes begins with a recap sequence.
Cliffhangers were used as literary devices in several works of the Middle Ages with One Thousand and One Nights ending on a cliffhanger each night. Following the enormous success of Dickens, by the 1860s cliffhanger endings had become a staple part of the sensation serials. Some medieval Chinese ballads like the Liu chih-yuan chu-kung-tiao ended each chapter on a cliffhanger to keep the audience in suspense.
The Scottish comic magazine The Glasgow Looking Glass, founded by English artist William Heath, pioneered the use of the phrase 'To Be Continued' in its serials in 1825.
Victorian serials
thumb|upright=0.7|left|[[Dickens and Little Nell (Elwell)|Dickens and Little Nell statue in Philadelphia ]]
Cliffhangers became prominent with the serial publication of narrative fiction, pioneered by Charles Dickens. Printed episodically in magazines, Dickens's cliffhangers triggered desperation in his readers. Writing in the New Yorker, Emily Nussbaum captured the anticipation of those waiting for the next installment of Dickens' The Old Curiosity Shop: