Back for the Dead: Difference between revisions

* After running out of regeneration power, Gluttony from [[Fullmetal Alchemist]] is absorbed into Father during Volume 14. In Volume 21, he returns.....Only to be killed off by Pride by the end of the Volume.

* Yoki in the first [[Fullmetal Alchemist]] anime, who shows up just long enough to be skewered through the head by Lust and spark a riot.

* Yurin L'Ciel in ''[[Gundam AGE]]'' appeared a little early on. She then comes back for a while, and quickly gets killed off.

* Frieza was apparently killed by Goku at the end of the infamous Namek fight in ''[[Dragon Ball Z (Manga)|Dragon Ball Z]]''. He returned to get his revenge a few episodes later. Then Trunks came in and [[Killed Off for Real|proceeded to slice him up into little bits...]]

* A famous example is Max Fenig, a fan favorite from an episode of the first season of ''[[The X-Files (TV)|The X-Files]]''. After being abducted at the episode's conclusion, he reappeared in the teaser at the beginning of a fourth season episode...as a dead body in the wreckage of an airplane. The rest of the two-parter dealt with reconstructing how this came to pass and dealing with its implications.

** There's also the Cigarette Smoking Man, who was killed off at the end of the seventh season. Two years later he was revealed to still be alive in the series finale, and then proceeded to get blown up by a missile.

* The character of Carey from ''[[Star Trek Voyager (TV)|Star Trek Voyager]]'' is a weird example of [[Back for The Dead]]. After appearing in most of the first season, he stopped appearing except in time travel episodes, leading fans to believe he had died off-screen. After 6 seasons of being used as a "Hey look! We're back in the first season. See? There's Carey!" marker, he showed up alive four episodes before the end of the series and got killed off (as a [[Red Shirt]]). The writers intended to have a guy the fans know [[Tonight Someone Dies|die for the shock value]]. But the problem was that his lack of appearances outside of time travel episodes made people already think he was dead, so the shock was more "wow, he's still alive?" then "GASP! They killed Carey!"

** The writer of that episode wanted to kill someone off, and was given the choice of Vorik or Carey. He thought Carey would have more impact, since fans would relate to a human more than a Vulcan. Bad choice. He was obviously unaware of how much fans liked Vorik, and of how fans already thought Carey was dead. Furthermore, rumour has it that Carey's odd treatment was because the writers were for a long time confusing him with Lt. Hogan, who had indeed been killed off in Season 2.

* ''[[Seres/Lost|Lost]]'': arguably, Michael's return in episode 4x07 and death in episode 4x13. Later on, a named background character wound up reappearing only to be killed off by [[Arrows On Fire|a flaming arrow]]. This may also be the case with Daniel Faraday.

* Aiden was fired from ''[[CSI: NY]]'' for tampering with evidence; she returned some time later as a [[Stuffed in The Fridge|charred corpse]] and in [[Necro Cam]] flashbacks.

** This did serve to give her a good send-off, and allow her to work as a [[Mentors|mentor]] one last time.

* Arguably, Bryce Larkin from ''[[Chuck]]''.

** Done with Emile Danko at the beginning of Season 4. As the [[Big Bad]] of Season 3, he survived that season only to be brought back for two episodes for a somewhat contrived reason during Season 4 only to be killed off immediately by the new villains.

* Chloe Richards returned to ''[[Home and Away]]'' in 2005 in the lead up to the show's 4000th episode after leaving in 1999. Meanwhile, promos for the 4000th episode promised that [[Tonight Someone Dies|a beloved character would die]] as a result of events happening in that episode. Who died as a result of that episode's car accident? It was Chloe of course.

*** The deaths of the other characters was left deliberately ambiguous so that they could return if the series was extended.

* In ''[[Foyles War]]'', Milner's estranged wife reappears after an absence of several seasons, and has just enough time for a blazing row with Milner before being found dead in an alley.

* For the first several seasons of ''[[How I Met Your Mother (TV)|How I Met Your Mother]]'', Marshall's father is a minor character who rarely appears. Come the Season 6 premiere, not only do we start seeing him more often, but his role in Marshall's life is bigger -- apparently the two of them are very close and Marshall tells him everything. His death at midseason is still a surprise, but only because this show rarely kills characters off. If you start watching Season 6 ''knowing'' someone will die, it's easy to guess who.

* Daniel Dickinson in ''[[Warehouse 13]]'' was initially part of the primary cast. After the first season ended, he disappeared until the ninth episode of the second-in which he was murdered before the opening credits rolled.

* In ''[[Farscape (TV)|Farscape]]'', Jool leaves the regular cast four episodes into the fourth season. She reappears (with a rather different [[Jungle Princess]] characterisation) in the [[Wrap It Up]] miniseries "The Peacekeeper Wars", and is fairly rapidly killed along with a whole lot of other people to give the Scarrans an extreme [[Kick the Dog]] moment.

 

* ''[[Speed Racer the Next Generation]]'': In "The Beginning", Speed Jr. and his friends find and restore the long-disappeared Mach 5, but it ends up truly totaled after a vicious race.

* ''[[American Dad (Animation)|American Dad]]'' has a whole episode of this.

 

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