10 Post-Credits Movie Scenes That Change Everything

2. Moriarty Revealed - Young Sherlock Holmes

As the most portrayed character in cinema history, Sherlock Holmes naturally hit cinematic milestones before modern icons even thought they could work on screen. Back when Batman was best known as a camp-fest, Chris Columbus delivered a youthful reboot of the world's best consulting detective, seeing Holmes and Watson solving crimes a boarding school. Sherlock Begins, if you will (albeit nowhere near as gritty).

The villain of the piece is Professor Rathe, Holmes mentor, who hides his sacrificial cult leader status with a pseudonym that would make Tom Marvolo Riddle blush. A character unseen in Arthur Conan Doyle's original works, it should have come as little surprise that he's actually a much more well known Professor - Moriarty - as revealed in the film's post-credit scene.

Of course, the sequel this scene promised never materialised, but it still has a massive impact, further tying the movie into the broader Sherlock mythos.

Columbus was something of an early-pioneer of the post-credit sting, using it habitually in his eighties output to tie up otherwise throwaway loose ends, although Young Sherlock Holmes is without a doubt his most inventive. For 1985, throwing in a big twist at the end of the credits is pretty forward thinking, putting a lot of faith in an enraptured audience not immediately bolting out of the cinema.