Back from the Dead: Difference between revisions

=== '''As a [[Death Trope]], all Spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.''' ===

 

 

== Anime & Manga ==

** ''[[American Gods (Literature)|American Gods]]'': Laura is revived by a magical coin placed in her grave, but you wouldn't call her exactly ''alive''.

** ''[[Neverwhere]]'': The Marquis de Carabas was [[Killed Off for Real]] but had the foresight to arrange his resurrection in advance, letting him come back with useful information because people talk in front of the dead.

* [[Robert Jordan]]'s ''[[The Wheel of Time]]'', because it deals with a [[Reincarnation]] mythos, has an interesting variation on this trope: people who die don't stay dead (if they serve [[Big Bad|the Dark One]]), but return to life in entirely new bodies. So not only does the reader get to engage in the guessing game of "who did this new character used to be", and in at least one case a fun [[Gender Bender]] takes place, this also means that none of the other characters will recognize the resurrected Forsaken. A side example is the case of [[Temporal Paradox|balefire]], which instead of resurrecting a dead character, changes the timeline so that [[Reset Button|they never died in the first place]]. This becomes an important plot point later.

* In Julie Kenner's ''Kate Connor, Demon Hunter'' books, Kate's first husband Eric (another [[Demon Slaying|demon hunter]]) has died before the start of the series... but he manages to bring himself back in another guy's body. This is awkward for Kate because she adores/adored Eric, but has remarried and had another kid in the time it took him to come back.

* ''[[My Mother the Car]]'', in which the main character's mother is reincarnated as an old car.

* Averted three times, with three of the principal characters, in ''[[American Gothic]]'': in the very first episode, Merlyn Temple is murdered by Sheriff Lucas Buck--but we see her as a ghost immediately in the very same episode and she remains around as Caleb's [[Spirit Advisor]] for the rest of the series; Caleb himself later dies after an electrocution accident, but is immediately resuscitated by Sheriff Buck's powers; and in the penultimate episode of the series, Buck is seemingly killed and buried (after being stabbed in [[Achilles Heel|the third eye]], only to see his eyes pop open in the coffin just before the credits roll. (He isn't dug up until the series finale, however.)

* [[Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)|Buffyverse]] examples: Buffy was dead for nearly five months at the conclusion of Season 5 but she was brought back my Willow's magic, Angel after Season 2 was brought back from hell, Spike ([[Heroic Sacrifice]] in the last episode of ''Buffy'', returned as a ghost on ''[[Angel (TV)|Angel]]''). Many Buffyverse characters were [[Killed Off for Real]], though, sometimes despite efforts to bring them back supernaturally (Joyce Summers and Tara; Whedon actually did once plan to resurrect the latter, though). ''[[Angel (TV)|Angel]]'' also did a [[Lampshade Hanging]] on this trope in the episode "Shells," in which Angel and Spike talk about how in "their world", dead doesn't always mean dead. The trope is subverted in the same episode, as it's made clear that even though Fred's body is being used by the demon goddess Illyria, Fred can't be brought back by supernatural means as one might expect (the writers did plan on eventually splitting them apart though, had the series not been denied a sixth season).

* Villains of ''[[Farscape (TV)|Farscape]]'' made a habit of dying and then coming back for more. One villain, Durka, came back twice until Rygel took his head off and stuck it on a scepter.

** As of Season 6, their grandfather Samuel Campbell pulls off the same trick. Guess even Mary's side of the family has the immortal males gene.

* Frequently done on [[Soap Opera|Soap Operas]]. Sometimes the audience knows while other characters don't, other times, everyone is clueless. While this is typically limited to certain types of deaths--plane crashes, explosions, drownings, an especially egregious example is that of a woman who clearly died in her husband's arms after being shot, yet was resurrected a few years later. Another example would be Den Watts in ''[[Eastenders]]'' who was [[Killed Off for Real]] (with a gun concealed in a bunch of daffodils) only to be brought back years later as a [[Ratings]] stunt.

* In series 8 of Red Dwarf the dead crew members are rebuilt by nanobots

* In The Brittas Empire Gordan Brittas is crushed by a falling water tank and goes to heavan but is returned to life on Earth because St Peter considers him to annoying to stay in heaven but not bad enough to go to hell

* Gamel and Mezool were the first of the Greeed in ''[[Kamen Rider OOO]]'' to be killed. However, Uva, outnumbered and outgunned against Kazari, farms a massive amount of Cell Medals and retrieves several of their Core Medals in order to bring them back to life. Comically, Gamel doesn't really seem to notice he died and came back to life, [[Crowning Moment of Funny|being too focused on finding candy]].

* Becoming an Orphnoch is usually what this trope entails in ''[[Kamen Rider Faiz]]''. When someone dies, there is a very slim chance that the person will be revived as an Orphnoch.

** Outside of mere regeneration, there have been numerous times where [[The Master]] has seemingly been [[Killed Off for Real]] and come back for more. At least twice (Anthony Ainley's Master and John Simm's Master) the body has been assumed to have been burned to ashes, and yet there that particular incarnation was again for more mischief.

** Peri was stated to have been killed by [[Brian Blessed|King Yrcanos]] during the ''Trial of a Time Lord'' arc. Later in the same arc, it's stated that she survived and married Yrcanos.

* [[Metroid|Samus]]'s archnemesis Ridley has to be getting up in the ranks of continuously resurrected villains. He explodes in ''Zero Mission'' but is rebuilt for ''[[Metroid Prime]]''. He fall of a cliff and blows up again, and comes back in ''Metroid Prime 3'' as if nothing ever happened. He ''vaporizes'' this time, but Ridley reappears anyway in ''Super Metroid''. Samus blows him up ''again'' and the planet his remains are on explodes too. Ridley officially dies here, but then the Galactic Federation are stupid enough to clone everything that has traces on Samus's suit, so he comes back again. He later gets beaten up by Samus, and then killed by a Metroid Queen. His ''corpse'' appears again in ''Fusion'' and is promptly infected by an X Parasite and dies. For now.

* Occurs in ''[[Okami (Video Game)|Okami]]'', where it's a major part of the plot, having Amaterasu as the resurrected/reincarnated form of Shiranui.

* The main story of ''[[Tsukihime (Visual Novel)|Tsukihime]]'' begins with protagonist Shiki Tohno being seized by an inexplicable urge to stalk and murder a woman he happened to pass by on the street, via cutting her into seventeen pieces. He is understandably dismayed when Arcueid shows up the next day complaining about how much power it took to revive herself.

* Over the course of the semi-sequel [[Tsukihime (Visual Novel)|Kagetsu Tohya]] Shiki can end up in a number of what would normally be bad ends, some of which are death such as being eaten by a jaguar that comes out of Arcueid's underwear drawer. Yes, really. However, the next day, he's always okay again because Len is constantly reviving him. Possibly a subversion though as these 'deaths' are not actually the real death of his body, though some scenarios seem as though they would genuinely end with Shiki dead, dream or no.

* All of the Ascended (read: [[Player Character|player characters]]) in ''[[Rift]]''. In the case of the Guardians, it's because the gods needed you alive again; in the case of the Defiant, it's thanks to years of [[Magitek]] research.

* A running gag in the ''[[Monkey Island]]'' series, where villain LeChuck is dead even before the series begins (he is a ghost in the first game). Even though hero Guybrush kills him at the end of every single game, he always comes back at the beginning of each new game to be the villain again. Further parodied in that he [[Came Back Wrong|comes back wrong]] in a slightly different way every time, leading to names like The Demon Zombie Ghost Pirate LeChuck.

* Tezkhra in ''[[The Reconstruction (Video Game)|The Reconstruction]]'', who first appears to be a [[God of Evil]], but turns out to be a perfectly nice guy who was killed by an evil creature that stole his name. One endgame sidequest allows you to recover his soul by defeating a [[Bonus Boss]], then have a [[Necromancer]] restore his body.

* Raikoh, the hero of ''[[Otogi Myth of Demons]]'', is revived no less then FOUR times over the course of the game and it's [[Sequel]]. The only other people that come back from the dead only do it once. Raikoh just has more importent things to do then staying dead.

[[Category:Fairy Tale Tropes]]

[[Category:Back From The Dead]]