Not Quite Dead

"Never count a human dead unless you've seen the body. And even then you can make a mistake."

- Frank Herbert, Dune

Any situation where the bad guy has been dealt a mortal blow which he could not possibly have survived, and it looks as though The Hero has won - but a couple of scenes later comes the twist: He's not quite dead. On the contrary, he's back, ready for more - and pissed off.

Basically, a form of filler where the Big Bad seems to have been defeated, but actually survived. Maybe he was rescued from certain death by his right-hand man. Maybe he was spared by a healing spell - or in more drastic cases, upgraded to One-Winged Angel status by way of Emergency Transformation, or even a small case of We Can Rebuild Him. Or maybe he's just that hard to kill. Either way, the fight isn't over yet.

Compare Only Mostly Dead and Almost-Dead Guy. There may or may not be some overlap with Staying Alive. It can be shown - if at all - by having their eyes open or fingers twitch. Not to be confused with The Undead. If a villain does this a lot, it's probably because he has Joker Immunity.

Anime and Manga
": Did you guys even check my pulse?"
 * Perfect Cell in Dragonball Z is teleported into the afterlife by Goku after initiating a self destruct technique set to go at any minute, after which he regenerates from a single surviving cell with an increased Power Levels from Saiyan DNA pushed to the brink of death and which absorbed the teleportation technique that Goku had just used. Using said technique, Cell returns to the battlefield back on Earth just as everyone had believed the battle over and begun to mourn Goku's passing.
 * Broly was stabbed in the stomach as an infant, punched in the abdomen by Goku (with chi donated from the others) and finally hurled into the sun by a triple Kamehameha. While that last one did kill him, he still came back as a clone. They finally beat him in Movie 11, wanna know what kills him? The Ocean.
 * This can basically be said of most of the villains in Dragonball series:
 * Freeza
 * Cooler
 * Cell and Broly as mentioned above.
 * Buu, in his many forms
 * Naruto's Orochimaru wins the award for most Not Quite Deads within the shortest time period. In the space of a few chapters, he was dismembered by Sasuke, only to come back and eat Sasuke, only to get dismembered again, only to come back as The Virus to some degree inside his Battle Butler, Kabuto.
 * He comes back again from within Sasuke during his battle with Itachi, practically tasting revenge, except he's almost instantly defeated permanently. Then you see a snake that's obviously some sort of piece of him that can regenerate, but
 * Bleach is full of these, on both sides but especially with the heroes.
 * You'd think someone would die if you do the equivalent of running them through a paper shredder. Byakuya Kuchiki does this to two different characters. Neither dies. Even the one character Killed Off for Real in the early series is Not Quite Dead.
 * Happens frequently enough with both protagonists and antagonists in the Hueco Mondo arc, one would think that the giant clouds of dust kicked up by the horrible attack du minute had incredible regenerative powers.
 * Etemon in Digimon Adventure is sucked into a space-warping... warp... thing that was apparently destroyed, but managed to bide his time and evolve before coming back as Metal Etemon. Vamdemon (aka Myotismon) is shot through the chest by Angewomon, but survives in order to fulfill a prophecy and has to beaten by War Greymon and Metal Garurumon.
 * As a general rule, just because Digimon tend to have explosive deaths doesn't mean you shouldn't stick around because they may pull themselves back together. This happens to Neo Saiba in V-Tamer 01 more than once but he still doesn't learn.
 * Zhuqiaomon in Digimon Tamers is defeated by Mega Gargomon, but reappears and nearly kills the tamers, before Azulongmon convinces him to do a Heel Face Turn.
 * Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann subverts it when
 * Then he shows up in Episode 26 to once again inspire awesomeness and fulfill his own words: "A real man never dies, even when he's killed."
 * In Godannar, this becomes Kouji Tetsuya's gimmick, being the Butt Monkey of the series. His mech gets trashed on a regular basis, and suffers a lot of nasty wounds, but always manages to crawl out of it by saying something to the effect of "I'm not dead", shortly after the other characters have written him off.
 * Humorously played with in Mnemosyne when Rin ambushes the Monster of the Week in her office. She quickly guns down Rin without any hesitation, and hurries over and, being a doctor, checks her over to make sure she's dead before straightening up, sighing in relief, and going on with her business. She is thus quite terrified when Rin just gets back up after a minute.
 * Case in point, Rin getting killed happens thrice an episode on average. She just happens to be immortal and thus, resurrects each and every time.
 * Mad Bad Bull, a minor antagonist from Kiddy Grade, had a heavy metal crate dropped on him by Éclair and Foxy Fox with Artificial Gravity, but still managed to punch his way out of it.
 * In Transformers Super God Masterforce, the first battle between Super Ginrai and Overlord ends with Ginrai apparently dead, while Overlord is unscathed and decides to obliterate the rest of the Autobots. However, at the very end, Ginrai refuses to die.
 * One Piece has the Skypeian "god" Enel. During his fight against Wiper, Wiper actually manages to kill Enel with the dangerous Reject Dial. Too bad for him that Enel has the powers of the electric Devil Fruit, which automatically works like a Magical Defibrillator, restarting his heart. Cue round 2.
 * For years, it's been accepted by One Piece fans as a basic truth that the entire series is an embodiment of this trope. Unless the death scene happens in a flashback, no matter how obviously dead a character seems to be, they really aren't. This was considered irrevocably confirmed when a minor character made a Heroic Sacrifice which involved not only being at ground zero of an I-can't-believe-it's-not-a-nuke city-buster bomb, but quite literally holding it while it goes off. He showed up in bandages and a crutch several chapters later.
 * Used and then averted in Seirei no Moribito. Balsa manages fake her death by sending her and Chagum careening over a cliff and into a valley filled with poisonous vapors, with their dead horse and straw dummies clearly visible. Because the vapors would kill anyone going down there before they'd reach the corpses, their pursuers are forced to declare them dead. They do come back later to double check once they've equipped themselves to handle the vapors, however.
 * The second season of Mobile Suit Gundam 00 has a version of this in episodes 22-24.
 * 00 also has, who pulls a Mu La Flaga in the final battle after having about three continuous CMoAs... but comes back in the finale and gets the girl to boot.
 * Mu-san aside, Gundam Seed also has Andrew Waltfeld. He was supposed to have died after Kira Yamato defeats him, but due to his immense popularity with fans, he got revived miraculously. He was, however, significantly maimed (losing an arm, a leg and an eye), requiring him to be fitted for prosthetic limbs.
 * In Code Geass, . Near the end of the second season, a similar thing happens to.
 * Don't forget
 * In a more extreme example,
 * In Clannad,.
 * This happens to Shuda in Rave Master. While character in the manga do have a tendency to survive insane amounts of damage and be up and about as if it hadn't happened only two days later (which made it so weird when one of them actually did have to spend time in a hospital), cutting off your arm and falling at least 2000 feet into a forest is over the top. No explanation is given for how he survived too (not that one ever is).
 * Thief King Bakura, from the final season of Yu-Gi-Oh! gets locked in a tomb and supposedly falls into a deep dark pit... only to somehow escape and sneak back into the city.
 * Fairy Tail loves this. We have: . It's Fairy Tail though, so the spoiler blocks might not even be necessary.
 * Junji Ito's Tomie.
 * Katekyo Hitman Reborn- For crying out loud,
 * In Mahou Sensei Negima, Nagi killed, right? Wrong.
 * Rakan comes back from . Twice!
 * In Fullmetal Alchemist, poor Ed
 * Bradley pulls this off quite spectacularly. TWICE!
 * And before all that above, Lust stabs Roy and Havoc through their lungs and leaves them to bleed to death.
 * in Monster, but he's at least suffered an immense injury.
 * D.Gray-man has the protagonist  and yet he wakes up the next episode.
 * in the finale of Tiger and Bunny. He is not impressed by his friends' inability to properly determine when someone is dead.
 * in Monster, but he's at least suffered an immense injury.
 * D.Gray-man has the protagonist  and yet he wakes up the next episode.
 * in the finale of Tiger and Bunny. He is not impressed by his friends' inability to properly determine when someone is dead.


 * Being stabbed through the heart with a large spike? With an actual doctor checking his pulse to make sure he was dead? Minor things when it comes to the self-proclaimed Ultimate Teacher, Ganbachi Chabane.

Comic Books

 * Hammerhead in the Ultimate Marvel and regular continuities make heavy use of this trope.
 * Played with in Blue Beetle #33-34.
 * The Phantom was the ultimate inversion of this: every time the old Phantom kicks the bucket, a new one is chosen, usually his son or closest kin. This allows them to project the illusion to their enemies that the Phantom is immortal, though their friends know better.
 * While the '03 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Cartoon was based on the Mirage comic Baxter Stockman became a cyborg by choice and was killed outright thus averting the fate of his later cartoon incarnations. Granted he also had more chances to die with the plots that existed outside of the comic in the '03 cartoon and was stranded more than killed in the '87 cartoon..
 * A sequel comic based on Disney's The Great Mouse Detective was actually about Fidget the bat being revealed to have survived the fall from Ratigan's blimp at the end of his film, and immediately choosing to be on the side of good.
 * In The Secret History, Dyo always seems to just cling onto life one way or another.

Fairy Tales

 * Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. And all their numerous variants. Especially creepy in Neil Gaiman's adaptation of the former, "Snow, Glass, Apples", in which the huntsman really does remove Snow White's heart and give it to the queen.
 * In "The Golden Bird", the hero's envious brothers shove him down a well to kill him, and succeed in trapping him there.
 * Similarly, the brothers in "The Bird Grip" throw the hero into a lions' den, and in "The Golden Blackbird", into a lake.
 * In "The Story of Bensurdatu", the hero is trapped at the bottom of the river—to perish.
 * In "The Brown Bear of the Green Glen", John's brothers set on him, to kill him, but he recovers.

Fanfiction

 * This trope is pretty common in Fanfic - in fact, any given fandom is bound to have at least one fic in which a Killed Off for Real character, usually a popular one, returns from the dead.
 * One such example with its own page on the wiki is The Ghost Map, in which it's revealed that Professor Moriarty somehow did survive his duel with Sherlock Holmes. Of course, in-universe, this is merely suspected by Holmes and confirmed by Colonel Moran, who isn't exactly the most trustworthy fellow. However, Word of God has confirmed that Moriarty is indeed alive - now the author simply needs to explain how.
 * An entire football (soccer) team has something like this happens to them in Astral Journey: It's Complicated, with the narrator being decleared dead upon arriving to the A&E. Luckily, she gets better... hence why she the narrator.

Film

 * The Trope Namer is Monty Python and the Holy Grail, specifically the scene wherein Prince Herbert fires off an arrow with a plea for his release tied to it. The arrow flies straight and true...into the chest of Sir Lancelot's trusty squire Concorde, leading to the conversation in the page recap.
 * Inverted in Johnny Mnemonic. The Priest is blasted with EMP, frying most of his cybernetics, and is then electrocuted to a crisp. At the very end of the movie, he starts to rise from the floor, and a frightened gasp comes from Jane... only to reveal that his body is actually just being hauled up on a pulley. "Just garbage. Get rid of it."
 * A nameless character apparently killed in the first scene of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly comes back for revenge about two hours later, only to be shot more decisively.
 * Naturally, Sheriff Jed Cooper—played by Clint Eastwood in High Plains Drifter, fares better upon coming back from the dead (although at the very end, it seems that the character may actually have been a ghost playing a cruel game on both his killers, and the people who allowed it).
 * Marshal (not Sheriff) Jed Cooper is Clint's character in Hang 'Em High. The relevant character in High Plains Drifter is Marshal Jim Duncan. Second, Clint was "The Stranger", but not Jim Duncan; that role was played by Buddy Van Horn, who was Clint's stunt double on many occasions.
 * Karl, Hans Gruber's second-in-command, in the original Die Hard.
 * Lampshaded in Scream:


 * Lampshaded in all the sequels, too, but to the best effect in 4:

"Tic-Tac: You gotta remember to put one in his brain. Your first shot puts him down, then you put one in his brain. Then he's dead. Then we go home."
 * Naturally, a lot of slasher films tend to do this. Michael Myers (Halloween) and Jason Voorhees (Friday the 13 th) routinely get their fair of stab wounds from the Final Girl before it's all over. Jason was eventually Killed Off for Real, but since then he came back from the dead and is even more unstoppable.
 * Used to full effect to justify the creation of Halloween: Resurrection:.
 * Chucky does this in the first two films.
 * Even Freddy gets this in Freddy vs. Jason, when both he and Jason are set on fire and thrown into Crystal Lake. Freddy returns and attempts to kill Lori and Will, before Jason stabs him and Lori decapitates him.
 * In the backstory to the second Ghostbusters movie, Vigo the Carpathian had been poisoned, stabbed, shot, hung, stretched, disemboweled, drawn and quartered. Before his head died he uttered this prophetic warning: "Death is but a door, time is but a window. I'll be back."
 * An example of the scenario which this page is actually about appears at the climax of Iron Man.
 * Army Of Darkness: "It's a trick. Get an axe."
 * In Sin City, Bruce Willis' character knows that even when a death looks impossible to survive, one must always "confirm the kill."
 * The comedy Freaked parodies this trope to death.
 * Not quite.
 * Jason Statham in Crank. He falls out of an airplane, lands on a car, bounces off, hits the pavement, and then blinks. The sequel shows us that he's definitely still alive.
 * The titular character of The Spirit.
 * In the movie Ben 10: Race against Time, the Tennyson trio stumble across the seemingly mummified corpse of Constantine...right before he sits up and declares "I'm not dead!", scaring both Ben and Gwen. Grandpa Max is not surprised, as usual.
 * Averted in the 1997 version of George of the Jungle. After a character falls from a bridge, the narrator reminds everyone that "Nobody dies in this story. They just get really big boo-boos."
 * "Why do they call him Boris the Bullet Dodger?" "Because he dodges bullets!"
 * The same can be said about Bullet Tooth Tony who survived an entire clip being unloaded into him in a flashback.
 * In The Film of the Book of The Lord of the Rings, Aragorn plunges off a cliff during the warg battle in the Two Towers. To the surprise of no one, he comes back relatively unscathed.
 * Ironically, in the extended DVD of the Two Towers the actor almost drowned when shooting the scene of him floating in the water.
 * Gollum is thrown over a cliff by Frodo in Return of the King, and returns at Mount Doom.
 * Grishnakh, who is more or less a mook, is stabbed by a Rider of Rohan in The Two Towers, yet he is still able to chase Merry and Pippin into the forest before Treebeard kills him.
 * Miller's Crossing plays it straight, then lampshades it with Caspar's policy:

""Yooooouuu bastards! T'ought I vass dead, did not youuu? Vell, I'm not, but soon youuu're going tooo be. D-E-D, dead!""
 * Red Dragon features this during, when Later averted when
 * Men in Black loves this. Kay shoots the giant cockroach from the inside and splits him in half. However, his top half lives and attacks them for a split second before he is finally killed by Laurel.
 * In Men in Black 2, Serleena is shot by Jay and blown to bits, however it is shown she survived, in worm form. Later, she chases after them in her ship, but is tricked and eaten by Jeff, the giant worm. However, she once again returns, this time in a more powerful form, until she is finally destroyed.
 * Not to mention, of course, poor Jeebs having his head blown off time and again.
 * In Galaxy Quest, Sarris's ship is blown up with mines. However, out of nowhere, he appears on the Protector, having teleported away from his ship at the last second. He is beaten down by Mathasar with a cane, but returns once again before an audience during the final scene, before Jason finally destroys him.
 * The Gamers: "It's Hunk, the mercenary you left for dead!

"Yzma: Kuzco is dead, right? Tell me "Kuzco's dead". I need to hear these words. Kronk: Uh, do you need to hear all those words exactly? Yzma: He's STILL ALIVE?! Kronk: Well, he's not as dead as we would have hoped. Yzma: Kronk! Kronk: Just thought I'd give you a heads-up, in case Kuzco ever came back. Yzma: He can't come back! Kronk: Yeah, that would be kinda awkward, especially after that lovely eulogy."
 * In The a Team, it turns out that  survived the explosion that apparently killed him.
 * From The Emperors New Groove:


 * Austin Powers plays with this numerous times. Usually by dragging it too far.
 * "Why aren't you dead yet!?"
 * Also Dr Evil's henchman Mustafa, after being shot in the neck with a dart and falling down a cliff.
 * Re-Animator:
 * In The Tuxedo, the antagonist falls to the ground and burns his face on acid. He later gets back up to charge at the hero, who finishes him in a somewhat gruesome way.
 * Wesley in the beginning of the The Princess Bride. Supposedly, he goes to seek his fortune and is lost at sea within the first five minutes of the movie. Yeah, right.

Literature
"And, of course, Over-Befalhavare Venture didn't know the half of it."
 * Sandman Slim teaches us that when you die in Hell you end up in Tartarus. Not to mention that the main character is virtually unkillable.
 * In the tenth and final book of the The Pendragon Adventure series, every character who has died in or before the other books (including the main character who died at the end of the ninth) turns out to be resurrected in the exact condition (age, etc) they were in at the time of death, minus, of course, the cause of death, and they all band together to fight the Big Bad.
 * In Terry Pratchett's The Fifth Elephant, there's a mild subversion where the hero knows the villain is Not Quite Dead.
 * Morjin in Ea Cycle survives.
 * Prince Andrei in War and Peace. He's left in a village with other hopeless wounded after the Battle of Austerlitz, and the way the chapter ends suggests that he dies there, but of course he doesn't.
 * Expanded Universe Jedi K'Kruhk has managed to be almost killed several times over. He goes into some form of hibernation if seriously wounded, leading to people assuming that he's dead. But no, he's still got a loooong time ahead of him.
 * In John C. Wright's Chronicles of Chaos Fugitives of Chaos]], when  falls off a building while fighting an enemy, everyone concludes he's dead.
 * Honor Harrington . Havenites,, more for their own masses than anyone else. Naturally,.
 * Many of her friends were though.
 * And that was not the only time in the series that someone was declared to be dead and then turn up alive later. There are at least three other examples.
 * A footnote in one of the Ciaphas Cain, HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!!! books reveals that Cain has been listed as "killed in action" so many times that the Munitorum eventually gave up trying to keep track and decided to keep him on the payroll regardless - even long past his confirmed death, and burial with full military honors.
 * In Hardwired by Walter Jon Williams, one character, Reno, is killed when his home is the target of a missile attack. He later makes a series of telephone calls to the hero. Turns out that he was a wirehead and was "jacked into the net" when the missiles struck. He spends pretty much the rest of the book as a disembodied mind, wandering around the equivalent of the Internet, looking at everyone's most secret files.
 * In Dan Abnett's Warhammer 40,000 Horus Heresy novel Horus Rising, 's unexpected survival makes him a hero in the fleet.
 * In Graham McNeill's False Gods, when Horus is felled by his injuries, the word on the ship is that he died; Mersadie and Karkasy go to see the arrival, and Karkasy notices that apocetharies are still tending him, so he must be alive.
 * In James Swallow's Warhammer 40,000 novel Deus Sanguinius, Rafen is in an exploding factory. He is thrown into a channel of water and ends up thoroughly banged about but alive. He sneaks onto the spaceship and when Arkio and Mephiston are deciding on single combat, Rafen calls from Arkio's forces that he will fight him. He walks out and takes off his helmet, and for the first time, Arkio shows shock.
 * In the Dragonlance War of Souls novels, Tasslehoff's death is retconned with the use of a magical time-travelling device given to him by a god. He's cheated death many other times also.
 * Voldemort, the main antagonist of the Harry Potter books, blew himself up by accident a decade before the story begins, and only managed to survive as a soul because of.
 * Let's not forget ; he might actually have been.
 * At the end of The Man Who Never Missed, Emile Khadaji has zapped 2388 Confederation soldiers (with paralyzing darts) before they found out who he was and imploded his hideout. And then they found he'd used exactly 2388 darts. The commanding officer is not pleased, because he knows this one-shot-one-paralyzed soldier legend will be a headache for the Confederation, but at least they've killed him. And then the narrative finishes:


 * In the Warhammer 40,000 novel Dark Adeptus,  survives getting his head pulped through.
 * During the course of The Lord of the Rings, several of the major characters are thought to be dead at one point or another—and some come a lot closer than others. But the Big Bad of the series, Sauron, actually does get killed off, several thousand years before the series begins. But he doesn't stay dead, because he has the One Ring as his Soul Jar.
 * If you include the First Age and the Second Age, it happens to Sauron often enough to border on Joker Immunity.
 * On a far smaller scale, Frodo, too, has a sort of Joker Immunity—except he's not a villain.
 * Santiago: A Myth of The Far Future . As one of his supporters cackles, after Santiago is quickly murdered by a bounty hunter—whom Santiago then guns down -- "Everybody knows that Santiago can't die!"
 * Cunégonde and Pangloss in Voltaire's Candide: the former is raped and disemboweled; the latter is hanged in a Kangaroo Court. Both come back with a Lampshade Hanging.
 * Bailey in Martin Chuzzlewit (Dickens) is thrown from a crashing coach and left insensible. His death is later reported to other characters. Guess who reappears at the denouement, with a bandage round his head, reeling about with comic concussion?
 * In the Dale Brown novel Flight of the Old Dog,  is left for dead after he covers the team's escape from a Soviet base. The events of Night of the Hawk are kicked off when it is learned that he is not dead, merely Brainwashed into helping the Soviets - and that the CIA wants him Killed Off for Real as an apparent traitor.
 * This happens in Necropolis, the fourth book of the The Power of Five series. Following a fight in a temple in Hong Kong, the good guys think they've killed all the Big Bad's henchmen ... But there's one still alive, hiding under the altar. He's dying, but goshdarn, he's going to take one of the Five down with him. He sets his sights on Jamie, the closest, and is aiming his gun when Scott comes bounding into the picture, and telepathically aware of the danger to his twin, bulldozes Jamie out of harm's way ... Thus letting the bullet continue on into Scarlet's head instead.
 * She's probably not quite dead either, but I guess we won't know till the next book comes out.
 * In Percy Jackson and The Olympians, "The Titan's Curse", the main antagonist Luke falls off an insanely high cliff on to the rocks below. Percy is sure he's dead, after all No One Could Survive That but alas, Luke is still alive.
 * In Robert E. Howard's "The Devil in the Moonlight" Conan is, it turns out, Not Quite Dead after a head injury.
 * In "A Witch Shall Be Born", Taramis believes her sister dead.
 * In the Sherlock Holmes story "The Final Problem", Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has Holmes commit a Heroic Sacrifice by, but as we discover in "The Adventure of the Empty House", he didn't actually die.
 * This is also done to a lesser extent in "The Adventure of the Dying Detective", wherein Holmes pretends he's dying of a poison used by the murder suspect in the Mystery of the Week. Luckily we only have to wait a few more paragraphs afterwards to find out he was just faking it.

Live Action TV
"Buffy "You don't think I watch your movies? You always come back." (Dracula starts to reform again) "I'm standing right here." (Dracula leaves)"
 * Captain Jack Harkness of Torchwood and Doctor Who. If he dies, he gets better. This has fooled many a foe. He normally turns up again after the villain says to the rest of Torchwood 'Well, your leader's dead'.
 * In Torchwood,
 * Not to mention that when Davros appeared in a Classic Doctor Who serial he was invariably killed off, and yet always managed to get inexplicably better in time for his next appearance- This even included dismemberment.
 * In MacGyver the character Murdoch always ends the show by seeming to die in "No One Could Survive That!" type circumstances only to reappear alive, though often worse for the wear a few episodes or seasons later.
 * Likewise Dr. Loveless, the nemesis of James West in The Wild Wild West.
 * of Lost does this twice. The first time, he was shoved into a sonic fence and assumed dead. He later claimed it wasn't set to a lethal level. The second time, he was impaled by a spear, but managed to live long enough to blow himself up.
 * In the season 4 finale,
 * Not to mention back in Season 1, when we are led to believe
 * Many thought died after being punched by the smoke Monster in the penultimate episode. Not only he shows up in the Grand Finale
 * Caleb in Season Seven of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is thought to be dead, but gets back up and ruins the reunion between Angel and Buffy.
 * Not to mention a lot of other characters, including Buffy herself. Death just doesn't agree with those people.
 * The line in episode "Once More With Feeling" is, "Hey, I've died twice" -Buffy
 * Subverted in 5x01 'Buffy vs. Dracula', after Dracula's been staked for the second time.

""Dr. Jackson's going to die when he sees this!" "What, again?""
 * CSI: Miami almost does this with
 * CSI New York also has someone is pronounced dead, stolen, dropped in the sea and then starts coughing up water,
 * Tony Almeida in ~24~ was believed to have been killed in Season 5, but promos for Season 7 show him alive,.
 * Charles Logan receives a potentially fatal knife wound in a season 6 episode, but is last seen in an ambulance, thus leaving his fate unclear (especially by ~24~ standards). He returns 2 seasons later, and in the series finale
 * In Stargate SG-1 Apophis
 * Also in Stargate SG-1 Dr. Daniel Jackson is able to survive the un-survivable. He repeatedly actually dies, almost dies, or is believed to be dead a total of nine or so seventeen times including the movie
 * This is lampshaded by two archaeologists finding some ancient ruins:
 * This is lampshaded by two archaeologists finding some ancient ruins:

"Sylar: Didn't I kill you? Peter: Didn't take."
 * Father Jack Hackett from Father Ted. Jack drank floor polish which only brought about the symptoms of death including lack of pulse, rigor mortis, decomposition...
 * Heroes had a bit of fun with this when Sylar and Peter Petrelli faced off for the second time in season one.


 * Arthur Petrelli used his super powers to knock  over the edge of a building. When Arthur teleports away, assuming that   is finished, (because No One Could Survive That), the camera pans over to the edge of the building, where he seems to be dangling from a flagpole for dear life. Even Dangerously Genre Savvy Evil Overlords make mistakes.
 * Nathan Petrelli and Sylar both tend to invoke this trope at the end of every season. In all seriousness, these guys die at the end of a season and are usually confirmed alive by the time the next Graphic Novel comes out. This is taken to its (il)logical conclusion in the 3rd season finale, where both appear to be Not Quite Dead, in their own ways.
 * At the end of the Star Trek episode "Amok Time", Spock resigns in disgrace after having killed . Tri-ox compound, my ass.
 * When the Law and Order: Criminal Intent episode "Great Barrier" aired, NBC let viewers vote on whether Nicole Wallace would be Killed Off for Real or given a No One Could Survive That. They chose the latter, and Nicole returned for a couple more eps.
 * In one episode of I, Claudius, Caligula orders Claudius to be thrown off a bridge, assuming that he will drown. Claudius is dragged away, only to return in the same scene, dripping wet and covered in pond weed. Fortunately, Caligula is too amused by this to try again. Earlier in the series, a slave interrupts Caligula as he announces the death of Tiberius - not only is he not dead, but he's feeling a lot better and wants his dinner. Caligula promptly has him smothered, goes back outside, and cheerfully announced that the emperor is definitely dead this time.
 * Played straight repeatedly in Farscape with just about every character, but interestingly zigzagged near the end of the first season when Aeryn was stabbed. The episode closed with John saying how lucky she was that the knife missed her heart. It seemed like a very conventional case of not quite dead. Then the next episode brutally subverted this when Aeryn revealed that the wound had done internal damage, and she was probably going to die soon.
 * It stands to reason that this would occur in Sherlock, as this IS just a modern-day incarnation of the original stories and the season two finale is titled "The Reichenbach Fall". One difference between this episode and the original "The Final Problem" is that while we know Sherlock's alive because, Doyle intended to keep Holmes dead.
 * In the third season, Chuck shot Shaw in Europe and watched him tumble off a bridge into the river below. Of course, he ignored the entire point of this trope which is: When you shoot someone and they fall in the water they are NEVER dead.
 * As of Fringe episode 3x16,.
 * In the Season 1 finale of The Pretender, Dr. Raines should not have survived when, yet he's still alive   in Season 2.
 * Larry, yes Dead Larry
 * Power Rangers Wild Force had this in the final battle against
 * Before that, he'd appeared dead when he lost his powers battling Cole's Super Mode and was soon tossed off a cliff by the new Big Bad Mandilok. He got better and made Mandilok Quite Dead (though he did revive him and the other Org generals to serve as guardians during his final transformation. Presumably Brainwashing was involved, which he can do.)
 * Also, Zen-aku. He's seemingly destroyed after Merrick is purified of the evil of the mask, only to reappear wanting to merge with Merrick again.
 * It also appears in Power Rangers RPM where after Venjix's new body is destroyed, (multiple times) he always returns to his tube within his fortress. Even after the final battle is over and the rangers turn in their morphers,
 * Seriously, Power Rangers love this trope. In Power Rangers Zeo, King Mondo is destroyed yet somehow he returns towards the end of the series, . Even after that he appears in Power Rangers in Space. An earlier example in Zeo was when Adam assumed Rito and Goldar didn't survive the explosion of the Command Center. The viewers soon learned he was wrong.
 * from Power Rangers Lost Galaxy does a cross-series one. Surviving the events of the finale, appears in Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue seeking to regain her former power.
 * Zeltrax from Power Rangers Dino Thunder has to set some kind of record. His backstory is . He goes on to eat a Finishing Move at the end of a climactic battle against Tommy on his airship, which soon explodes from the damage it had taken during the battle. Dead, right? Nope, he comes back, though his mind isn't what it used to be. He eventually gets his own Super Mode and fights Conner's Super Mode, and gets quite kablooified. ...and immediately stands up in his normal mode. Destroyed by all the Rangers in the penultimate episode... and reveals that he'd used a hologram to fake his death and had actually jumped out of the way of the combined-weapon BFG blast. We're pretty sure his defeat in the season finale was his Final Death (his Power Rangers SPD appearance was by way of Time Travel.) but there's such a thing as Reunion Shows and the dude has died about five times... so who knows.
 * Zeltrax from Power Rangers Dino Thunder has to set some kind of record. His backstory is . He goes on to eat a Finishing Move at the end of a climactic battle against Tommy on his airship, which soon explodes from the damage it had taken during the battle. Dead, right? Nope, he comes back, though his mind isn't what it used to be. He eventually gets his own Super Mode and fights Conner's Super Mode, and gets quite kablooified. ...and immediately stands up in his normal mode. Destroyed by all the Rangers in the penultimate episode... and reveals that he'd used a hologram to fake his death and had actually jumped out of the way of the combined-weapon BFG blast. We're pretty sure his defeat in the season finale was his Final Death (his Power Rangers SPD appearance was by way of Time Travel.) but there's such a thing as Reunion Shows and the dude has died about five times... so who knows.

Tabletop Games
""In general, if you as the gamemaster aren't ready for a [villain] to die yet, you should exploit any opportunity to cast doubt on the certainty of doom. ... As the old movie trope goes, if the heroes can't find the body, then the villain isn't necessarily dead.""
 * The Shadowrun 4th Edition handbook advocates gamemasters using this trope:


 * The prevalence of resurrection spells in D&D generally make death a non-permanent affair. And even if there's no body to resurrect, you can always physically travel to one of several possible afterlives and find the dead comrade there, or just use a more powerful spell that doesn't need a body. Death never lasts in D&D.
 * Of course, in 3.5 the lost level is a problem, as is the cost. Low level Resurrections require an intact, fresh body and several thousand gold worth of Diamonds, higher level spells have an even heftier pricetag. And if the DM wants you to stay dead, then there are ways to make sure that dead you stay. Such methods include certain abilities and spells that prevent a characters resurrection by anything but Miracle/Wish, and even then only with a 50% success rate; making it so that the character doesn't want to come back (Resurrection spells can only pull back someone willing); trapping or outright destroying the soul; animating the body as an undead which limits what will raise the character to the highest spells possible unless the undead can be destroyed; and more.
 * In D&D 4th edition several epic destinies have level 30 powers that cause a "dead" character to get back up there next turn/at the end of the fight/the next day.
 * By far the most ridiculous version of this in 4th edition is the Undying Warrior epic destiny, which keeps the user from ever being permanently killed. The worst thing that can happen is they'll appear a day later, perfectly fine, and that's only if they are killed repeatedly in a short period of time. The Thief of Legend epic destiny gets a lesser version of this where the respawn time is a day and an hour always, but they can reappear anywhere safe on the current plane, making them more immune to being trapped in a Fate Worse Than Death than the Undying Warrior.
 * The Dark Wanderer Epic Destiny takes it even further than the Undying Warrior; unlike the Undying Warrior who just never dies, the Dark Wanderer does die, but then simply walks out of hell.

Theatre
"Oh we're not yet dead, to Camelot we go To enlist instead to try and earn some dough And so although we should have stayed in bed We're going off to war because we're not yet dead!"
 * The second act of Into the Woods reveals of, "I thought you were dead." "Not completely. Are we ever?" Of course, what he means by this is left ambiguous.
 * At the end of Wicked.
 * The Musical, Spamalot references this Trope with the song "He Is Not Dead Yet".


 * In Ken Ludwig's Lend Me a Tenor, Italian tenor Tito Merelli appears to have died of a phenobarbital overdose in his hotel room. However, he's just sleeping really, really deeply and wakes up, puts on his costume, and runs out the door at the end of Act One. Hilarity Ensues.
 * In Martin Guerre, Martin is shot on stage saving Arnaud's life, and tells him to return to his hometown to tell his wife he's sorry. Of course, one dead person impersonator Becoming the Mask later, Martin returns to Artigat, alive and well, and demanding his name.

Video Games

 * Call of Duty Black Ops 2: While it was hinted in intel that Frank Woods was still alive, the reveal trailer showed him to still be living.
 * Darth Revan was killed when Malak bombarded the bridge of his flagship with turbolasers..
 * When Commander Shepard shows up on the Citadel in Mass Effect 2, s/he is stopped by security guards who observe that his/her records say s/he is dead. "I was only mostly dead. Try finding that option on government paperwork."
 * Resident Evil loves playing with this trope.
 * In Resident Evil Albert Wesker is impaled by the Tyrant, but shows up in every other game nonetheless.
 * Not exactly. Wesker's resurrection, and subsequent Big Bad status were retconned into the plot of Code Veronica. Up until then he was not seen, and presumed dead.
 * In the RE: Remake, the following absurdity can occur. You have to fight Lisa Trevor on a platform of some sort, surrounded by a huge pit on all sides. If you fall off, it's an instant death. Wesker backs you up by firing on Lisa. However, it's possible for Wesker to get hit by Lisa and fall into the pit. If that happens, he'll still somehow turn up none the worse for wear in the Lab final battle, with absolutely no explanation.
 * Wesker only helps fight Lisa if you play as Chris. If you choose Jill, Barry Burton helps fight Lisa; and if he dies, then he's Killed Off for Real.
 * According to the Code Veronica: Wesker's Report file - it turns out that Wesker planned this by injecting himself with some (unnamed) virus that would give him super speed, super strength, and even preserve his mind - but it could only be activated by him almost dying. Not even Capcom could believe something that ridiculous, so they then retconned their retcon by simply having him disappear during your battle with the Tyrant in one (apparently canon) ending of the Resident Evil Gamecube remake.
 * Which was re-retconned in Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles as showing Wesker being impaled by the Tyrant, rising from the dead as a superhuman, and being highly pissed the place was about to blow.
 * Also in the original Resident Evil 1, if certain conditions were met, instead of Wekser being killed by the Tyrant, you can find his body decapitated by a Chimera in the self destruct control room. The Battle Game in the Saturn version even had a zombie Wesker. Seems he was going to be Killed Off for Real but Capcom changed their mind and saved that for Resident Evil 5.
 * Ada Wong in the sequel is presumed dead after either a nasty fall, or being electrocuted. She returns in Resident Evil 4 feeling much better. Seems, she was merely Pining for the fjords. Also, it's revealed in Resident Evil 3: Nemesis's epilogues that she survived.
 * Even in that same game, about five minutes after this happens a shadowy female tosses down a rocket launcher to Leon while he's fighting the final boss.
 * Jack Krauser in Resident Evil 4 has this as well. It would appear that he was Killed Off for Real in the final battle with Leon, only for him to appear and be killed at least three more times in Ada's mini game that is taken as canon. Fans still believe he's alive.
 * If he got off the island in time.
 * In the Monkey Island series, the grand villain LeChuck, who is actually a ghost in the first game and is seemingly destroyed at the end of it, comes back as a zombie, a demon, and a ghost/zombie/demon over the course of the next three games.
 * In Tales of Monkey Island,
 * In Cave Story this trope is important to the secret ending, when
 * Borderlands has a downloadable side quest, called "The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned", in which
 * Forum Community/MMORPG Gaia Online's storyline is notorious for this. Many of the main characters have been shot, dropped off freakishly tall towers, and then crushed by said tower, all in the same plot update. Every single person killed in that particular incident was later revealed to be alive and well in later updates. Two by use of Applied Phlebotinum, and the other two simply by turning out to be vampires. In fact, the characters ever to be Killed Off for Real are characters introduced solely for making the current Generic Horror Movie Parody plausible.
 * This is used in the Unlimited Blade Works scenario of Fate/stay night, when carries this to ridiculous levels by  Talk about hard to get rid of...
 * Also done to in the same route, who gets
 * Also Saber in Heavens Feel.
 * KANE LIVES!
 * M. Bison of the Street Fighter series has apparently been killed off thorough the series, only to come back in the next game. Chronologically his first death occurs in Street Fighter Alpha 3, in which his body is destroyed by the Psycho Drive, but his conscience survived and he receives a new host body for the Street Fighter II series, which doesn't have the same abilities that his "original" body from the Alpha series had. Apparently Bison's body is destroyed again at the end of Super Street Fighter II Turbo, this time by Akuma's "Raging Demon" technique, only to get another new host body for the Street Fighter IV series (which reveals that he has an entire factory of host bodies). Since IV is a prequel to Street Fighter III, where Bison doesn't show up, so it remains to be seen if he will be Killed Off for Real this time.
 * In Army of Two, Phillip Clyde goes through this one a lot, to the point where ever after you kill him in the final boss battle, they Never Found the Body.
 * In Final Fantasy IV, Scarmiglione comes back from the dead in a much more powerful and grotesque form after you beat him the first time on Mt. Ordeals, proclaiming that he, in no uncertain terms, will knock you all down!
 * Multiple cases in World of Warcraft:
 * Illidan Stormrage, the Well-Intentioned Extremist, was struck down earlier and left bleeding in the ground. However, we find out he did not die.
 * Magtheridon, a demon Illidan defeated and supposedly killed, is revealed to have been imprisoned instead. Admittedly, Illidan later used his blood to empower an army of enhanced orc soldiers.
 * Maiev Shadowsong, the night elf warden defeated by Illidan, was also revealed to have been imprisoned instead of being killed, which makes even less sense since she is no use for him and the only reason she lived was to kill him anyways. Guess who ended up killing him?
 * Worth noting is that Maiev was employed as Illidan's warden for his ten thousand year imprisonment. Small-minded as Illidan was he had the intent to do the same to her.
 * Muradin Bronzebeard was believed to be dead (though you can say his death scene in Warcraft 3 is questionable at best) turned out to just have a Laser-Guided Amnesia and survived the event.
 * Several old classic bosses are confirmed alive at 'Cataclysm. Including Hogger, Ragnaros, Balnazzar, and Nefarian.
 * In the comic about Varian Wrynn, it is revealed that assassin Garona Halforcen and Twilight Hammer leader Cho'Gall are still alive.
 * There's also Kael'thas "Merely a setback" Sunstrider. The lore says he's dead now, but since Tempest Keep was merely a setback, fans would not be surprised at all if it turned out that the Magister's Terrace was too. Heck, the quest to beat him in the Magister's Terrace is even called "Hard to Kill."
 * Pikmin 2 had some enemies that, after they're defeated and left alone for a while, would slowly recover their health and eventually come back to life.
 * A lot of Metal Gear antagonists, but the most notable ones are Vamp (a knife-throwing hypnotist with weird nanomachine immortality powers) and Liquid (A Made of Iron Determinator), both of whom get beaten multiple times in a single game, but just won't stop.
 * Super Metroid: Big Bad Mother Brain pulls this one off twice in the epic Final Battle. First, Second,
 * No mention of Ridley? He practically embodies this trope! The actual entity known as Ridley has died 5 times, the first four of which he came back from. Subsequent appearances in the chronology (Other M and Metroid Fusion) have merely been clones, though
 * from Jak and Daxter gets
 * Part of The Reveal in Overlord is that.
 * in Guild Wars
 * In Portal the credits song indicates that  isn't dead, even after
 * Perhaps a much stranger example from the second game is.
 * In Super Mario Galaxy 2, the final fight with Bowser seems to be just like the previous two fights, only with more attacks from Bowser. You beat him, he falls into the darkness, and he loses the Grand Star just like in his previous battles.
 * This happens again in New Super Mario Bros. Wii. After Mario defeats Bowser just like he did in Super Mario Bros., Kamek makes him giant, and he reemerges from the lava for the final phase of the battle.
 * In Mario & Luigi: Partners In Time, Elder Princess Shroob is defeated, and turns into a mushroom. At the end of the game, she is eaten by Bowser, and the two become the final boss of the game before Elder Princess Shroob's spirit is finally destroyed.
 * In Super Paper Mario,  seemingly blows himself up in what appears to be an attempt to kill one of the protagonists.
 * Early during Another Century's Episode: R, the audience learned of one Dr. Shiki who, according to the antagonists, was killed by human colonists of the planet Eria prior to the events of the game.
 * In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, . He does this again in Twilight Princess  . In the same game, after Stallord is seemingly defeated and his skull is lying motionless, Link uses the Spinner to raise the central platform into a pillar, only for the skull to reveal itself to be perfectly okay and attack Link, forcing a second round of the fight.
 * In Phantom Hourglass, when Bellum is defeated by Link, he falls, and is believed to be dead, although Oshus's power has not yet returned. He beleives it will eventually, but guess who attacks them later on... and guess who regains all his power once we officially see Bellum turn to sand and explode.
 * Donkey Kong Country 2:  Maybe he accidentally ate one (or more) phoenix down when he was just a baby crocodile.
 * In Time Hollow, pulls this after falling from a cliff.
 * If any video game villain embodies this trope more than Ridley, it's Dr. Eggman from Sonic the Hedgehog. At the conclusion of most of the earlier Sonic games, Sonic has destroyed Eggman's mech and blown up his base, supposedly killing him as he is not seen again in the game, but he always escapes somehow and returns for the next game. Once his Joker Immunity became apparent, they even stopped pretending to kill him off in later games, often showing him after the defeat of the final boss.
 * In fact this serves as part of the plot for Sonic Chronicles: Dark Brotherhood. In the game's start Eggman is apparently killed when his battleship explodes while he is in it. Naturally he's still alive. The trope is even lampshaded by the protagonists, many of whom suspect that Eggman is still alive before there's even any reason to suspect as much.
 * In Chrono Cross, it's revealed that
 * A key mechanic in The Godfather 2. If you don't kill an enemy Made Man using the specific "condition" needed, he'll just come back for more later.

Web Comic
"WOW! You're the third-liveliest dead man I've ever met!"
 * Happens in Dominic Deegan quite often.
 * Lampshaded in this Narbonic strip.
 * On her arrival in Something*Positive, Kestrel (from Queen of Wands) is hit by a car and left a bloody mess in the street, with no one noticing. A few months later, she returns with head injuries, medical bills, and another not-so-secretly infatuated female best friend.
 * This is one theory among many as to how Oasis keeps returning from the dead over and over again in Sluggy Freelance.
 * No Rest for The Wicked: The Boy finds Prince Ricardo right after the "fall off the cliff" part. Not too startled when he surges to attack—then he is The Boy Who Set Out to Learn What Fear Was

" "
 * The page quote is parodied in this Bob and George strip as well.
 * Initially, Mark, then in Freak Angels. Both look worse for the wear though (especially the latter, )
 * The Adventures of Dr. McNinja has come back for a second round.
 * Blake from Gold Coin Comics is a childhood rival that somehow survived his entire hometown being wiped out.
 * In Nip and Tuck, the Show Within a Show Rebel Cry features the hero surviving an exploding ship by trickery.
 * In Endstone, Jon's reappearance is greeted with this. Then, it was fifteen years.
 * Lampshaded in Order of the Stick by (who else?) Elan after

Web Original

 * Believe it or not, Kill'Em All series Survival of the Fittest has this in  There are also hints that more supposedly-dead characters may show up, at least the ones whose deaths haven't been shown.
 * It's been revealed that
 * In V4, Clio Gabriella knocks Garry Villette off a cliff and watches him plunge into the water below. She doesn't bother to check to see if he surfaces again and believes him to be dead. He isn't.
 * The entirety of Red vs. Blue: Reconstruction is spent trying to kill the Meta.
 * Church himself is a heroic example. He was killed in the very first season, but it didn't take long for him to come back as a ghost.
 * Really, Red vs. Blue loves this trope; Sarge died for an episode only to be brought back via CPR, Tex died at the end of season one and came back next season, Captain Flowers died in his first appearance, but was brought back in the next season before dying again.
 * The miniseries The Gamers mocks this trope when the players' characters meet up with an angry mercenary the left for dead in the "castle of almost certain death."
 * In Tales of MU, the main character's mother is believed by everyone to be dead, but side stories reveal that she may be alive and living under an assumed name, for reasons not completely clear yet.

Western Animation

 * Kenny in South Park does this often in Season 1, only to be killed seconds later.
 * In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2003, this occurs to the Shredder a grand total of four times—three if you count the occasion that was retconned into Back from the Dead.
 * No Baxter Stockman? Its been lampshaded lots of times and he has practically died at least 5 times.
 * Done and averted in the 87 cartoon; Baxter was supposedly killed once. Later it became more of a running gag for him to get stranded and not killed. Even his last appearance had him in a fate worse than death: stranded forever in interdimensional limbo. And he was pretty sympathetic, too.
 * Stinkmeaner in The Boondocks dies in "Grandads Fight", but in "Stinkmeaner Strikes Back" he beats the Devil's Martial Arts Gauntlet & gets sent back to Earth.
 * Another example of this trope occurs during episode 5 "A Date with the Health Inspector". Ed Wuncler the III and his friend Gin rob a store ran by people of Middle Eastern descent. A police officer happens to be there who in a parody of the Iraq War and the status of whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction or not is asked by Ed if he sees any weapons on the Middle Eastern man. The police officer refuses at first but then agrees not wanting to get on Ed's bad side, as it turns out the Middle Eastern man did have a gun and he and some other Middle Eastern men open fire on Ed and his friend Gin with the police officer getting caught in the cross fire. Then the police officer is laying down on the ground and Ed's friend Gin has a brief exchange with the man, whose name turns out is Freddie, that is word for word with Monty Python. Freddie then gets up and gets shot again. At the end of the episode back up is called and the Middle Eastern men are arrested and Ed and Gin are viewed as heroes who stopped "terrorists" and Freddie makes a full recovery.
 * In Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Satan sends MC Pee Pants back to Earth often, providing the only continuity the show has.
 * In Family Guy's famous chicken fights the chicken is killed three times yet he always returns for more. Within a single fight (the first) he is seemingly beaten to death, only to attack Peter again seconds later.
 * For that matter, this should also apply to the monkey in Chris's closet, Connie, and of course Meg, who have all sustained typically fatal injuries and even led fans to wonder whether or not they were actually Killed Off for Real by the end of these episodes until they show up fine in later episodes.
 * Shendu from Jackie Chan Adventures is killed off at the season one finale, and is assumed dead. The act of "killing" him off allows him to become a spirit and he returns in the body of Valmont. The rest of the series sees him being resealed in the demon underworld, reborn, resealed in his original state, revived, and final sealed off for good in another dimension. Note, he is never actually killed.
 * In the first season finale of X-Men,
 * No, this is not Master Mold's final appearance, if you're wondering.
 * Swindle in Transformers Animated was, at the end of "S.U.V", paralyzed and trapped in vehicle mode, which the Autobots allowed the Detroit Police to tow away with the stated goal of either selling him or stripping him down for parts, not even mentioning that the "SUV" was a Decepticon. In "Five Servos of Doom", he turns up alive and unharmed, though still stuck, Sentinel Prime having bought him from the impound lot (considering his parts couldn't move, they probably weren't worth much).
 * Starscream himself. In nearly all versions, the guy just won't die, or at least stay dead.
 * Near the end of Barbie and the Diamond Castle, one of Lydia's spells backfires on her and she disappears. The main characters finally reach the Diamond Castle and are about to undo all of Lydia's spells when guess who comes flying in the window?
 * In Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, Phil Ken Sebben gets hit by a bus in Season 3. Then at the series finale: "Ha! Ha! Final Episode stunt casting!"
 * Beautifully parodied on The Simpsons (of course) in their Bible Trilogy. A story called David and Goliath 2, an Affectionate Parody of silly actioners, has Ralph Wiggum's character die at one point pretty finally. Later in the story, he suddenly reappears anyway. Bart says "I thought you were dead!" All Ralph says is "Nope!" Absolutely no explanation is given for this.
 * Also, in the similarly non-canonical Treehouse of Horror VI story "Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace," Martin Prince falls asleep during class and is strangled to death in his dream by Groundskeeper-Willie-gone-Freddy-Krueger. As his body is being taken away, Martin reanimates into a crazed zombie and is about to attack Ms. Krabappel's class but is sedated and prevented from harming them. Groundskeeper Willie himself fits this trope, given it's a parody of Nightmare On Elm Street. But Willie's death, reanimation and vowing of revenge are not even mentioned until after Martin's death and reanimation at school.
 * Occurred quite often in Swat Kats, especially in the season 1 finale "Katastrophe", where four of the major recurring villains are caught in a massive warehouse explosion. They all get better by unknown means.
 * Earlier, this occurred to Dr. Viper in the episode "Destructive Nature", where he falls off a 300-story building only to reappear in "Katastrophe" unscathed. Viper was one of several Swat Kats villains whose Origin Story involved coming Back from the Dead, so this might explain it.
 * Darth Maul has been revealed to have survived his encounter with Obi-Wan Kenobi and makes his debut in Star Wars: The Clone Wars episode "Revenge." But judging by the ending,

Real Life

 * (Possibly) Real life example: Rasputin was poisoned, shot, beaten, shot a couple more times, and had his body dumped in a river—and even then he only died from hypothermia.
 * He must have survived drowning then to die of hypothermia, that's how - at the post-mortem - they knew he was alive when they put 'his body' in the river: there was water in his lungs!
 * He also had his belly sliced wide open in a previous assassination attempt, eliciting a cry of "I have killed the Antichrist!" from his would-be murderer.
 * But Wait! There's More!! It turns out that when they cremated his body, they forgot to cut the appropriate tendons in his body, thus, the heat caused them to contract, causing him to sit up.
 * Rapper 50 Cent laughs at your Instant Death Bullets.
 * Simo Hayha. Finnish sniper in WWII had over seven hundred confirmed kills of Soviets, 505 with his sniper rifle and two hundred or so by submachine gun. They tried everything up to Artillery strikes to kill him. He finally took a bullet to the jaw and it exited the left side of his face taking most of it. His buddies commented half his head was blown off. He woke up a few weeks later and lived to the ripe old age of 96, dying in April 2002.
 * A famous case in Belleville, Illinois. A teenager was attacked by the teacher she was friends with (and may have been having a relationship with) who broke her neck and then strangled her with a belt before dumping her body in the woods. Thirty hours later, in a driving rainstorm, the police found her body. Only she had somehow survived (her attacker pleaded guilty and went to jail for 20 years). I won't name the people involved, but look up Miracle Girl.
 * Mark Linkous, leader of the band Sparklehorse, fell into a coma after mixing anti-depressants and sleeping pills in a London hotel room in 1995. He was found clinically dead with his legs pinned under him, and was lucky not only to be revived, but also to be able to walk again after six months of rehab. Linkous, who continued to struggle with depression and substance abuse, killed himself more decisively in 2010 by shooting himself in the chest with a rifle in an alley near a friend's house while intoxicated.