The 14 greatest TV cliffhangers of all time

Cliffhangers are a plot device prevalent in modern fiction, but they have been taken to particularly nail-biting heights in television.

The concept originated in the Middle Ages, in a work of Arabic fiction called "One Thousand and One Nights," and Charles Dickens used the device in some of his stories in the Victorian Era. But the term "cliffhanger" didn't come into being until 1873, when Thomas Hardy's "A Pair of Blue Eyes" ended with the protagonist literally hanging off of a cliff.

While cliffhangers are used in many methods of storytelling, from film to novels, they're most commonly used in television, and particularly in season finales. They get viewers to watch dramatic episodes live, and the unfinished ending will get people to tune in for the next season.

Here, we collected some of the best and most iconic cliffhangers in television, from "The West Wing" to "Game of Thrones":