Fighting a Shadow: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:
▲[[File:doppleman_3_1676.jpg|link=One Piece|frame|[[Living Shadow|Some like to use this trope literally.]]]]
So you think you're hot stuff, eh? You actually did it, you [[Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?|punched out Cthulhu.]] You drove the [[Hit Points]] of that [[Physical God]] or [[Eldritch Abomination]] down to zero, and it [[No Body Left Behind|vanished]].
This isn't to say there wasn't some accomplishment here. At the very least, he's gone for now. In some cases this can mean peace for years. And in some...days. Better spend that time researching a way to make him [[Deader Than Dead]] or at least find a way to [[Sealed Evil in a Can|seal him in a can]] so that he can't rise again to threaten the land.
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{{examples}}
== Advertising ==
* This concept gave a creative and [[Nightmare Fuel|appropriately terrifying]] bent to a [[Public Service Announcement]] on riverside safety in the form of [http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Sg6IVUvVsAs The Spirit of the Dark and Lonely Waters], an impassive robed figure with the voice of [[Donald Pleasance]]. However, he has no power over sensible children, as represented by his Obi Wan-esque collapse. But ''he'll be back...''▼
== Anime and Manga ==
* The demons in ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'' behave much like those from ''[[Dungeons
** Evangeline uses her "Boss"-level powers to freeze and completely shatter the Demon God that was released during the Kyoto Arc, nevertheless Konoka's father and the other priests still had to reseal it; presumably it would regenerate otherwise.
** Albireo Imma uses a more or less indestructible magical projection of himself to guarantee himself a spot in the finals of the Tournament Arc. The only ways to defeat it are to dismiss the projection, or attack his physical body (which is several miles away). Nobody except Kaede (a ninja who uses similar body replication techniques) figures out what he's doing, and admits that she can't really do anything about it.
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** It should be noted that ANY Vandel can use this trick, and while the shadow may be weaker, the shadow of an extremely powerful Vandel is much more than even an experienced buster can handle.
* Type one used straight and played with in ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'': the twelth Angel, Leliel, appears as a floating, apparently unkillable orb over Tokyo-3, disappearing and reappearing at will. {{spoiler|Turns out its "shadow" is the real angel.}}
* In ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha
* {{spoiler|The Anti-Spiral}} from [[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann]] seems to be something like this. Possible an collective conscience in a shadowy form.
* Junior Warrant Oficcer Schrödinger from ''[[Hellsing]]''. His powers and name deriving from the [[wikipedia:Schrodinger's cat|though experiment]] designed by the physic of the same name. As he is a self observing Schrödinger's cat he's everywhere and nowhere at the same time, being his body the manifestation of his self-consciousness.
* Xellos from the anime/manga/novel "[[Slayers]]" only exists truly on the astral plain. His body can be repaired with a thought. Subverted somewhat by the fact that a sufficiently powerful magic spell or weapon can hurt his astral form which tends to transfer to his physical form. There is, in fact, an entire class of spells made specifically to hurt and kill astral beings.
==
* In ''[[Chaotic]]'', Aa'une, leader of the M'arrillian tribe, can exist as a weak projection than can still fight but once the player has fulfilled the necessary requirements he or she can flip over the card and Aa'une will become a [[Game Breaker]]. Hence this card is an extremely powerful yet fragile [[Glass Cannon]].▼
== Comics ==▼
* ''[[Locke and Key]]: Crown Of Shadows'' had an entire army of Shadow monsters attacking the protagonists.
* Rockslide from ''[[X-Men (Comic Book)|X-Men]]'' may be the poor man's version of this. His consciousness is some kind of disembodied psychic spirit that controls the mineral pieces of his body (which can explode and reform from nearby earth material at will).
* In ''[[Watchmen (comics)|Watchmen]]'' Doctor Manhattan is treated as a [[Physical God]], but towards the end of the story he's revealed outright to be one of these when
* This happened to [[Atomic Robo]] in the Shadow from Beyond Time, where the titular creature kept coming back. Eventually, Robo meets with his fellow time displaced selves inside of the shadow and they detonate a quantum bomb that destroys the creature at all points in time simultaneously.
* ''[[Final Crisis]]'' reveals that [[Darkseid]] has been doing this for years, in order to [[Retcon]] decades of [[Villain Decay]] and justify his many, many defeats at the hands of lesser foes. The ''real'' Darkseid is far more powerful and dangerous.
** Actually, it has been stated several times over the decades that this is what he's got going, not just in ''[[Final Crisis]]''. [[Grant Morrison]] is just the guy who ''remembered'' he could do this, while many other writers seem to have forgotten. As an aside, the avatars of Darkseid in previous stories seem to be more like clones than this trope, since they specifically say they are ''not'' Darkseid and often talk about him in the third person ([[Third Person Person|and not the way Darkseid usually does]]), to the point where they say they are not as great as him. Though in all other senses they are Darkseid and naturally still consider themselves superior to everyone else, and still think and act and behave like he does. The ''real'' Darkseid, for the record, was stuck on the Source Wall for millenia, and had ''never'' shown up before ''[[Final Crisis]]'' except in flashbacks to his younger, usually less powerful self.
* Nekron, as of the ''[[Blackest Night]]'' can inhabit any dead body.
* Similarly, the Dark Judges of [[Judge Dredd]] can take any dead body as their vessel.
* Cyborg, Hank Henshaw, from Superman. His real form is indestructible energy (he has survived being thrown into a black hole and the explosive death of the Anti Monitor, much to his chagrin). His can rebuild his trademark cybernetic kryptonian form ad infinitum.
== Film ==
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* In ''In The Name Of The King: A Dungeon Siege Tale'', the evil wizard puts his consciousness inside an armored warrior. Every time his avatar is slain, he just laughs and uses a new body to fight.
* In ''[[The Matrix]]'', the Agents are computer programs working for those running the Matrix, so there's no reason they should stay dead. If you actually manage to kill one by the rules of the simulation, the program remains in existence, and the Agent can return immediately by possessing the nearest bystander. [[Double Subverted]] when Neo destroys Smith at the end of the first movie, seemingly for good but ultimately only causing him to become more powerful in the next movie.
== Literature ==
* In the ''Tale Of The Five'' series by [[Diane Duane]], there is one day of the year where one can kill [[Satan|the Shadow]] but it returns immediately the day after and is said to be a waste of time.
* The [[Satan|Lone Power]] of the ''[[Young Wizards]]'' series [[Time Dissonance|exists mainly outside of time]], so the protagonists usually have to be satisfied with only ever defeating the fragments of It which are inside of the timestream. Sometimes, however, the defeat has a metaphysical component which has a permanent effect on the [[Big Bad]].
* Sauron in Tolkien's ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' universe. It may take 2-3 millennia for him to come back, but only destroying the One Ring will permanently kill him (and even then he'll persist as a powerless spirit).
** All the Ainur (the [[Fantasy Pantheon]] of Middle Earth) are like this, with a few exceptions. [[God of Evil|Morgoth]] became so obsessed with ruling and then destroying the physical world that he became bound to a single physical body, though even that was still [[Nigh Invulnerable]] (rather than risk him coming back, the other Valar cut off his hands and feet and threw him into the void); the Wizards were deliberately bound into mortal bodies to limit their powers so they wouldn't be tempted to fight Sauron directly and risk [[The End of the World as We Know It]] (Gandalf was only able to come back with help, either from [[Council of Angels|the Valar]] or [[God|Eru]]).
** The Maiar ([[Big Bad|Sauron]], [[The Mentor|Gandalf]], Saruman) residing in Middle-Earth in ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' can create material bodies for themselves, but when these are destroyed they can normally just make a new one, given enough time. That Saruman and Sauron can't is partly a result of the psychological degeneration that comes with a fall from grace.
* Crowley is annoyed at getting shot in ''[[Good Omens]]'', as "getting a new body was like getting a pen from a particularly bloody-minded stationary department". Fortunately it was with paint-balls.
* In the second book of [[Simon R. Green|Simon R. Green's]] [[Secret Histories]], ''Daemons Are Forever,'' the "Loathly Ones" who are possessing humans are only fragments of the [[Eldritch Abomination|"Hungry Gods"]] invading our reality.
* [[Percy Jackson and The Olympians]] the monsters and gods are almost impossible to truly kill. Monsters dissolve into sand and pop back up after awhile. The time depends on the monster ex. Mrs. Dodds came back after a few days but some take lifetimes.
* In the [[Cthulhu Mythos]], all of Nyarlathotep's physical forms are merely avatars (or "masks" as they are sometimes called). He is the personification of the soul of the Outer Gods, so whether he actually has a real body at all is never quite clear. Yog-Sothoth (who is one of the aforementioned Outer Gods) is also an example of Type 1 of this trope, as the form in which he manifests is merely the portion of him that intersects that particular point of space and time (Yog-Sothoth exists simultaneously in all points of space and time, or rather, everything exists simultaneously
* In [[Magnus]], the title character ends up battling one of these.
* Driving the HP to 0 of the Demonlord Tagazin, in the 10th Book of the ''[[Lone Wolf]]'' series "The Dungeons of Torgar" does not kill him; it just sends him home. In fact, the Remake of the series feels obliged to point out that even if you roll a [[One-Hit Kill]] with the [[Infinity+1 Sword]]; no, he's not dead. You later fight him on his home turf in a later book; where he can be destroyed permanently.
* Many supernatural beings (such as demons) are like this in [[The Dresden Files]]; ordinarily when summoned, their spirit arrives in the mortal world and creates a construct body, and if that body is killed, the spirit is simply sent back to the Nevernever (essentially, the supernatural dimension that exists alongside the mortal world). They can be killed permanently in the Nevernever itself, if they enter directly into the mortal world in their true form (as opposed to a construct body), or with certain powerful spells and weapons.
* Nagato from ''[[The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya]]'' is a "data entity" and she can directly manipulate the physical matter of her body. She is able, for instance, to perfect her eyesight when Kyon suggests she's prettier without her glasses.
== Mythology and Religion ==
* [[The Bible|Jesus]] from Christianity and the [[Avatar
* The concept of an immortal soul, either via [[Reincarnation]] or a true afterlife, implies that this is the case for humans or indeed, all mortal beings, plant or animal.
== Tabletop Games ==
* There is an entire template for avatars to the gods in ''[[Dungeons
** Something to consider before taking on the [[Bonus Boss]] in the [[Expansion Pack]] of the second game of ''[[Baldur's Gate]]''. You can kill the avatar of Demogorgon instead of [[Sealed Evil in a Can|sealing it]]; but this will mean it will come back soon. [[Sadistic Choice|But this would also save the souls of fallen but redeemable monks...]]
** In ''[[Temple of Elemental Evil]]'', killing the Avatar of Demigod Iuz gives you a special addition to the ending where it's mentioned he did return; but the time away meant his plane is in tatters and he's afraid of your party. Also, whether one either drives the Demon Princess Zuggtmoy back to the Abyss for 66 years upon 0 [[Hit Points]] or [[Deader Than Dead|permanently destroys her]] depends on what actions you take.
** Demons in ''[[Dungeons
*** [[Lampshaded]] (like [[Troperiffic|everything else in D&D]]) in the ''[[The Order of the Stick|Order of the Stick]]'', [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0399.html here].
** [[The Icewind Dale Trilogy|Drizzt Do'urden the iconic Dark Elf hero]] once killed such a demon, and the being scoffed at him. A [[We Are as Mayflies|human might be dead by old age]] and safely in the afterlife by the time the demon returned, but an elf has a good chance of still being around in the turn of a century or two.
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** Somewhat like the example with Outsiders, the Astral Projection spell sends the targets' souls into the Astral Plane. If they travel to another plane, they form physical bodies when they arrive, but killing that body simply drives the soul back into the original body waiting in suspended animation where the spell was originally cast. To actually kill the characters, either their original bodies must be destroyed, or the nearly unbreakable silver cord connecting the body to the soul must be severed.
* The [[White Wolf]] game line ''[[Scion]]'' makes use of the Titans as enemies; here portrayed as various primordial or elemental concepts (like darkness, or fire, or fertility) existing as semi-conscious entities the size of entire dimensions. The Titans, being so alien as to not be able to interact directly with the world in any meaningful way, create various Avatars to deal with problems. [[All Myths Are True|This is how the plot explains the existence of multiple primordial titan stories from different pantheons]] (Surtr, the Norse fire giant king, and Prometheus being two titans associated with fire are actually two Avatars of the Greater Titan of Fire, Muspellheim). Suffice to say, the literal avatars of fire or light or water are extremely powerful. Also, if one successfully KILLS one (actual death, not just reforming-later-death) it irrevocably alters the nature of the concept represented by the Avatar. Killing the Frost Giant Ymir wasn't a great idea as it caused the Ice Age to instantly end and flooded most of the world.
* Daemons in ''[[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]]'' and ''[[Warhammer
** If you go to its roots, every daemon is effectively an avatar of its respective god, with a smite of personality depending on how strong it is (the Greater Daemons are effectively embodiments of the gods' overall personalities, but with their own sentience, while the Daemonic Beasts are effectively mindless), and can be absorbed back into the gestalt whole at a whim. So you aren't so much fighting the shadow of the daemon as the shadow of the god in millions of different avatars (which shows just how powerful the Dark Gods are, considering the strength of your average daemon). On the other hand, the Daemon Princes, who were once mortal, can considered to be this trope played straight - their bodies are comprised of warp energy and, if defeated, they are forced to return to the Warp for a few millenia while they pull themselves together enough to reconstruct their bodies.
** The C'tan Stargods can be considered a variant of this. They are immense Energy Beings that normally absorb radiation from stars and are unable to
** The Eldar Avatar of Khaine, despite it's name, isn't quite an example of this. It's an animated construct that houses a fragment of the Eldar war god's essence.
* Demons in ''[[Feng Shui]]'' are the same way. Killing one only sends him back to the Underworld, though if one kills a demon in the Underworld, then the death is permanent.
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* ''[[Arkham Horror]]'' features the above-mentioned [[Cthulhu Mythos|Nyarlathotep]]. The Crawling Chaos is simultaneously a possible [[The Big Bad|Ancient One]], a possible [[The Dragon|Herald]], and five to ten separate monsters (depending on expansions.)
* ''[[Kult]]'' subverts this: Archons and other superbeings can have multiple incarnate avatars and it take less than one day to create a replacement when one is destroyed. However, getting killed hurts and if several incarnates are killed in short period, the pain can actually kill the being.
▲* In ''[[Chaotic]]'', Aa'une, leader of the M'arrillian tribe, can exist as a weak projection than can still fight but once the player has fulfilled the necessary requirements he or she can flip over the card and Aa'une will become a [[Game Breaker]]. Hence this card is an extremely powerful yet fragile [[Glass Cannon]].
* Gods in ''[[Exalted]]'' work this way, though there are ways to [[Deader Than Dead|keep them from re-forming]].
== Video Games ==
* ''[[City of Heroes]]'' takes this [[Up to Eleven]]
* In ''[[The Elder Scrolls]]'', Daedric Lords cannot be killed. All you can do, even if you are the [[Crystal Dragon Jesus]], is send them back to "the voids of Oblivion", from where they will eventually return.
** Ditto their associated artifacts: you can unmake one (you get a chance in ''[[Oblivion]]'') but it will always spawn back somewhere in Tamriel within a few years.
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* Ganondorf from ''[[The Legend of Zelda]]'' series fits this trope to a T. Ganondorf appears to be the "physical body", while Ganon is the inner demon essence and a physical manifestation of Ganondorf's true power and rage.
** The Phantom Ganon from the Forest Temple in ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time|The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time]]'' probably counts as well.
** ''[[The Legend of Zelda:
*** Actually it's her actual physical form, cursed into an
* The Reapers from ''[[Mass Effect]]'' seem to use this trope combined with [[People Puppets]] to fight targets planetside. This trope is played straight only really in the second game, however, as killing the supercharged Collector drones doesn't damage Harbinger at all.
{{quote|
** That's because {{spoiler|Harbinger is using a proxy - the Collector General - ostensibly to avoid what happened to Sovereign.}}
* If you kill the god Pluto in ''[[Phantasie]] II'', he comments on how that didn't accomplish much and he just has to get a new body. You do have his attention now, though. The same goes for killing other Gods like Zeus which oddly enough doesn't permanently annoy them outside of the initial battle.
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* As part of a particularly long quest chain in ''[[World of Warcraft]]'', you summon the Avatar of Hakkar in the [[Scrappy Level|Sunken Temple]] and trap his essence into some egg thingy as requested by some troll. You can do this as much as you like as he gives you a scroll to keep summoning Hakkar, saying it weakens his true form. A nearby dwarf continues the chain and you learn that actually, [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|you've been making Hakkar stronger by summoning his avatar repeatedly.]] [[Oh Crap|Woops!]] Eventually, you ''do'' kill the true form of Hakkar, but that happened later than this quest line was introduced. And it's really not settled yet if he's actually dead or was basically just banished again.
** According to some quests, demons in warcraft universe work like this too. If this i true, presumably the reason Archimonde and pals haven't come back is because it takes quite a while for a powerful demon to regenerate.
** According to the ''[[War of the Ancients]]'' book trilogy, Sargeras was already disembodied at the end of the War of the Ancients, when the portal he was using to enter Azeroth imploded while we was inside (as opposed to him getting disembodies only after he
** One of the endgame boss fights in ''Wrath of the Lich King'' involves beating back the ''mouth'' of [[Eldritch Abomination|Yogg-Saron]] as he [[Sealed Evil in a Can|begins to emerge from his earthly prison]].
** In the Cataclysm expansion, Ragnaros, who was killed by players as the first end boss of WoW 1.0 will make a reappearance, his original death being ambiguously a "banishment".
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* ''[[Persona 3]]'' [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|explicitly names its foe thus]]: ''{{spoiler|Nyx Avatar}}''. The battle is [[Marathon Boss|long]], [[Barrier Change Boss|gruesome]], and [[Nintendo Hard|difficult]], and yet {{spoiler|the [[Heads I Win, Tails You Lose|enemy shrugs off all damage]]}} and calls forth the undefeatable [[Cosmic Horror]] it is a mere fragment of: {{spoiler|Nyx, Death itself}}.
* In ''[[Persona 4]]'' {{spoiler|Ameno-sagiri}} is something like this for {{spoiler|Izanami}}.
* Explicitly stated what The Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man is to Gozer in ''[[Ghostbusters]]'', hence it being banished in the first movie, "killed" in the game, then
* Wraith, the repeating [[Mid Boss]] of ''[[Phantom Brave]]'' is merely a shadow of the true evil, Sulphur. His class is specifically "Dark Avatar."
** Killing Sulphur merely sends him back to the "X-Dimension." The Magenta Core can summon him no matter how many times he gets sent back.
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*** Also, the prime and [[Summon Magic|summoned]] avatars.
*** And don't forget ''Pandemonium Warden'', one of the game's two (previously) unbeatable superbosses. When engaging him, he will disappear, then manifest himself as a randomly-selected boss from the ''Treasures of Aht Urghan'' expansion. Kill him, he will disappear, then reappear as ''another'' boss, and he will do that nine times, gradually moving up the scale from salvage bosses, to beastman kings to high notorious monsters. Only when all those manifestations have been defeated will he appear in his "true form" to face the players fighting him. And even if a group manages to "kill" him, his parting monologue strongly implies he does not truely die.
** ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics
** Julius in ''[[Sword of Mana]]'' has a literal shadow of himself that often does dirty work that he's not available to perform in person. However, it's apparently not remote controlled, given that it actually ''asks Julius a favor'' shortly before the final battle. The heroes still act like they're talking to Julius, though, which is somewhat confusing.
** Kefka was a fan of this technique, using it to taunt and ultimately defeat General Leo
* ''[[Mega Man X
* In ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'', Sephiroth manages to do this in a number of ways, though he doesn't have any inherent quality of always surviving death. The first times you see him in the game (when you can't fight him, and the characters wouldn't be up to it anyway), it's actually his real body but Jenova's stuff, so killing it almost certainly would not kill him. When you finally get to him for the [[Final Boss]] fights, you have to kill two physical [[One-Winged Angel]] forms in a row. After that, he was still hanging out in [[The Lifestream]] or something and pulled Cloud in to a mental battle. Even after being defeated, he still refuses to be dispersed in the Lifestream like a normal dead person, but instead eventually (in ''Advent Children'') sends out three avatars (who are separate persons from him) to look for what's left of Jenova. When they find it, one of them uses it to transform into Sephiroth, whom Cloud kills again. After ''that'', he's presumably gone for good.
** The Sephiroth in ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'' is apparently a more straightforward example, an embodiment of Cloud's inner darkness who will always return after being defeated by him. Cloud's fighting his own shadow, in a way. Okay, maybe it's not that straightforward.
* In the ''[[Legacy of Kain]]'' series, ''you'' get to be this guy when you play as Raziel. Raziel is a creature of the Spectral Realm, so when he appears in the Material Realm (where most of the story and gameplay takes place), that is just a new body he creates every time he reaches full power. Every time you die in the Material Realm you simply show up in that same spot in the Spectral Realm, and either suck souls to regenerate your health or simply wait for it to happen on its own; once you reach full health you just need to find a portal and you can return to the physical world (and since time in the spectral realm effectively stands still, whatever killed you may as well have thought you just teleported). Die in the Spectral Realm and you will return to the Abyss, and can continue on from there.
* Midway through ''[[Shin Megami Tensei II]]'', you fight against YHVH, aka God. Except it's not the real one, it's just a false image unconsciously created and empowered by the archangels. In the end, if you're not choosing the Lawful path, you fight the REAL one. And even if you win, He says He will not truly be defeated - as long as there are people praying to him, he will return.
** The same holds true to any demon or god in the series. Killing them doesn't stop them from showing up in any of the other games, or even later in the same game. (Often it gives you [[You Kill It, You Bought It|the right]] to [[Summon Magic|summon]] them as [[Mon
* As noted in the film entry above, The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man is actually listed as a Class 7 Projected Avatar of Gozer by ''Tobin's Spirit Guide'' in ''[[Ghostbusters: The Video Game]]''. Whenever it enters a new plane of existence, Gozer is given a new form and is [[Shapeshifter Mode Lock|Mode Locked]] into it, but it cannot be totally destroyed, only removed from the plane.
▲== Web Comics ==
* In the early
▲* In the early webcomic ''Argon Zark'', when Zeta deletes the monster Badnasty Jumpjump, the robot Cybert comments "alias deleted". The real Badnasty is still present.
* Parodied by ''[[RPG World]]''. The [[Big Bad]] knows that the band of heroes is going to storm his fortress, so vacates it and leaves a Shadow of himself behind to fight them. The good guys ''know'' that it's just a Shadow, but Hero insists on defeating it anyway.
* In ''Digger'', when Shadowchild {{spoiler|meets with and eats [[Sweet Grass Voice]], this might be part of why [[Sweet Grass]] was quickly defeated}}
* As a ''[[Dungeons
* The Bloodgrem from ''[[El Goonish Shive]]''. It can't be killed, only "un-summoned", and it can always be summoned again.
== Web Original ==
* This is explicitly how at least the more worrisome types of demons (like the one {{spoiler|Phase fought in 'Ayla and the Grinch'}}) work in the [[Whateley Universe]]. It's one thing that distinguishes them from ''devils'', which are more like evil spirits that exist in the here-and-now in this setting.
* An ''[[SCP Foundation]]'' researcher [https://web.archive.org/web/20120501135621/http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/incident-076-2-682
* In ''[[Fine Structure]]'', {{spoiler|Zykov was just the container for the local manifestation of the [[Big Bad]]. Killing himself wasn't surrender, it was just cutting out the middleman to [[My Death Is Just the Beginning]].}}
* In ''[[The Questport Chronicles]]'', this is one explanation for the [[Big Bad|Master of Darkness']] return after his defeat a thousand years ago. Or he might have been [[Faking the Dead|faking]] [[Never Found the Body|it]].
* In the ''[[Protectors of the Plot Continuum]]'', canon characters cannot be genuinely killed by fanfic. They can be made to think they're dead, but only their original author has the power of life and death over them. (Luckily this doesn't apply to fan-created characters, or the PPC's job would be much harder.) This has led to such unpleasantnesses as [[The Simpsons (animation)|Snowball II]] surviving being crushed by a car, [[The Lord of the Rings|Thranduil]] surviving being boiled alive, disembowelled and beheaded, and [[Redwall|Redtooth]] surviving having a spear forced an impressive distance into his lower intestinal tract.
== Western Animation ==
* This is how the Avatar in ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'' normally works: the Avatar's existence is mostly in the spiritual world; and reincarnates into one person at a time. This trope is actually inverted when in the Avatar State; by pulling all of itself into the physical world, the current Avatar wields tremendous power, but if he should die while in the Avatar State [[Deader Than Dead|he'll have no way of reincarnating]].
** To clarify, if the Avatar dies in the Avatar state the Avatar Cycle will be broken. The World Spirit will not necessarily die, but the Avatar Cycle will have to start over again. Each Avatar draws on the strength, experience and power of their
** Also should be noted that individual Avatar's are utterly powerless when they actually go to the Spirit World where the World Spirit (
* The death of anyone in ''[[Transformers]]'' who is considered to be a "multiversal singularity" is considered to be this, so don't count {{spoiler|Unicron, The Fallen, or Vector Prime}} out just yet. Mind you, it is an [[All There in the Manual]] thing and within their series, there is nothing to hint their survival - ''when shown to be completely destroyed.'' (Blow Unicron up but leave the head? He'll be back.)
** To specify, they are both extremely hard to actually ''kill'' rather than weaken, and, once you ''do'' actually kill them, it doesn't stick. They've long since learned the ins and outs of cross-multiversal existence, and periodically spend time in reverse-time universes, which basically allows them to save their e Spirit game and resume from there when a physical body kicks it, as the consciousness just jumps to the concurrent body in the reverse-time universe, which retroactively becomes their "true form", despite having been a past/future self a few minutes ago. So, essentially, they revive themselves by telling causality to ''suck it''.
* Brainiac in ''[[Superman: The Animated Series]]''. Even the smallest piece of him contains his complete consciousness - and he ''always'' has a back-up copy of himself stored somewhere. As such, he's one of the few opponents Superman ''will'' use lethal force on, because the Brainiac you can kill is always just one part of the whole.
** This is illustrated very creepily in the [[Justice League]]
** However, after that only a small fraction of him survived in nanobot form {{spoiler|inside [[Lex Luthor]]}}, and the rest seemed to be his equivalent of spiritual essence. When the former was destroyed a fragment remained, but it was powerless and seemed to be
*** And yet, [[Legion of Super-Heroes|Brainiac 5]] must've come from ''somewhere.''
* [[Big Bad]] Van Kleiss of ''[[Generator Rex]]'' was originally human, but his consciousness now resides in the nanites that infuse both his body and the area around his stronghold - which means that even if he's "killed", the nanites can just generate a new body for him straight from the ground.
▲* This concept gave a creative and [[Nightmare Fuel|appropriately terrifying]] bent to a [[Public Service Announcement]] on riverside safety in the form of [http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Sg6IVUvVsAs The Spirit of the Dark and Lonely Waters], an impassive robed figure with the voice of [[Donald Pleasance]]. However, he has no power over sensible children, as represented by his Obi Wan-esque collapse. But ''he'll be back...''
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Immortality]]
[[Category:Otherness Tropes]]
[[Category:Religion Tropes]]
[[Category:
▲[[Category:Fighting a Shadow]]
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