  Extreme mass ratio inspirals (EMRIs) occur when stellar-mass compact objects
begin a gravitational wave (GW) driven inspiral into massive black holes. EMRI
waveforms can precisely map the surrounding spacetime, making them a key target
for future space-based GW interferometers such as {\it LISA}, but their event
rates and parameters are massively uncertain. One of the largest uncertainties
is the ratio of true EMRIs (which spend at least thousands of orbits in the
{\it LISA} band) and direct plunges, which are in-band for at most a handful of
orbits and are not detectable in practice. In this paper, we show that the
traditional dichotomy between EMRIs and plunges -- EMRIs originate from small
semimajor axes, plunges from large -- does not hold for intermediate-mass black
holes with masses $M_\bullet \lesssim 10^5 M_\odot$. In this low-mass regime, a
plunge always has an $\mathcal{O}(1)$ probability of failing and transitioning
into a novel ``cliffhanger'' EMRI. Cliffhanger EMRIs are more easily produced
for larger stellar-mass compact objects, and are less likely for smaller ones.
This new EMRI production channel can dominate volumetric EMRI rates
$\dot{n}_{\rm EMRI}$ if intermediate-mass black holes are common in dwarf
galactic nuclei, potentially increasing $\dot{n}_{\rm EMRI}$ by an order of
magnitude.
