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[[File:doppleman_3_1676.jpg|link=One Piece (Manga)|frame|[[Living Shadow|Some like to use this trope literally.]]]]
 
 
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Unfortunately -- he's coming back. You see, what you killed was just ''part'' of him. [[God in Human Form|The physical part that was inhabiting our universe at the time]]. His reappearance isn't coming [[Back From the Dead]]. It's regrowing a fingernail. This is how [[The Powers That Be]] can occasionally take things into their own hands without breaking Da Rules.
 
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 Aa Can|seal him in a can]] so that he can't rise again to threaten the land.
 
Sometimes, especially in [[Video Games]], you aren't even that lucky, however. This can be used as a variation of [[Hopeless Boss Fight]] so that [[The Battle Didn't Count]], or [[Heads I Win, Tails You Lose]]. A very difficult boss that you aren't expected to defeat is presented to you. If you lose, the plot goes on with your loss, but if you win? "HAHAHA! That was only my shadow!", and then the ''real'' boss waves his hand, and you lose, anyway.
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* A more mortal villain may also get in on this act through the use of ensorcelling [[Casting a Shadow|their actual shadow]] into an effective [[Body Double]], through [[Self-Duplication]], or through more scientific means of making a clone or [[Hard Light]] duplicate of themselves. Unlike a normal [[Body Double]] or [[Cloning Blues]] clone, however, these are characterized by being effectively a [[Remote Body|remote-control body]], and not a seperate character with an independent will of their own. See: [[Actually a Doombot]].
 
Often accomplished with a form of [[Avatar]]. Not related to (but sometimes achieved by) [[Casting a Shadow]]. Also see: [[As Long Asas There Is Evil]], [[Soul Jar]]. The inverse of this trope is [[Synchronization]] where killing one part kills the rest. Compare [[Actually a Doombot]], [[Worf Had the Flu]], [[Backup Twin]], [[Cloning Gambit]], and [[Robot Master]], [[Decoy Getaway]] and [[Faking the Dead]].
 
''This is partially a '''death trope'''; examples may be spoiler-y.''
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** 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.
** Later in the [[Magic World]] arc, Fate's minions use this to taunt Jack Rakan and Konoka after trapping them in their pocket dimension. Unfortunately for them, they were close enough for Chamo to [[The Nose Knows|spot them]].
* The Heroic Spirits in ''[[Fate/stay Stay Nightnight]]'' are permanently etched into a spiritual domain called The Throne Of Heroes; their "deaths" in any one particular Grail War aren't permanent. In fact, one hero actually attempts to commit suicide by [[Time Paradox]] just to get away from existing. It's implied that even that wouldn't work.
** Not just implied, he was trying to kill his past self on the off chance that if he were the one to kill himself, the paradox MIGHT just be big enough that he'd be erased. But the "himself" he was going to kill wasn't even going to grow up to be him. Confusing.
** Speaking of the [[Nasuverse]] the [[All There in the Manual|backstory]] describes several entities known as Aristotles/Ultimate Ones/Types who are a limited sort of Type 2. Even if their physical bodies are destroyed, they still, in a way, exist, and possibly can reform their physical bodies.
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* In the ''[[Sailor Moon]]'' manga, after Demand destroys Wiseman, it is revealed that he was but an avatar of the Death Phantom, who has pretty much become one with the planet Nemesis.
* The D-Reaper from ''[[Digimon Tamers]]'' was capable of existing in and absorbing both the digital and physical worlds by creating an unlimited number of mega-level "Agents" alongside a red mass called "[[Names to Run Away From Really Fast|The Chaos]]". Destroying dozens of either barely slowed it down.
* In ''[[Umineko no Naku Koro Nini]] (When The Seagulls Cry)'', this is the case if Beatrice and Battler die on the chessboard since their souls exist elsewhere.
* In the heavily video game-influenced ''Beet the Vandel Buster'', an immensely powerful Vandel (monster) is defeated by the main character, but it turns out that he was only the "shadow" of the real one, who is, incidentally, trying to become the next [[The Dragon]] to the incarnation of evil itself.
** 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 ''[[Nanoha As]]'', the Book of Darkness is like this: every time it is physically destroyed, it respawns somewhere else in the multiverse, ready to devour another planet. The [[Big Bad]]'s "[[Evil Plan]]" includes sealing the Book in magical ice for eternity... [[And I Must Scream|along with its current Master]]. Team Nanoha, however, finds a better solution: separate the Defense Program responsible for regeneration from the rest of the book and destroy it. Even so, however, the Defense Program would have regenerated somewhere within days, had {{spoiler|Reinforce, the Master Program of the Book, not committed [[Suicide Byby Cop]]}}. ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha As Portable (Video Game)|TheBattleOfAces]]'' shows a [[What If]] scenario of what would have happened, had the Defense Program been allowed to regenerate.
* {{spoiler|The Anti-Spiral}} from [[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann]] seems to be something like this. Possible an collective conscience in a shadowy form.
 
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* ''[[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 (Comic Bookcomics)|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 {{spoiler|Ozymandias disintegrates him; he simply comes back moments later (the first thing he learned to do with his new form, as he points out) with a new body and very, very angry. "The world's smartest man means no more to me than the world's smartest termite" indeed.}}
* 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.
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* 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 ''[[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 Asas We Know It]] (Gandalf was only able to come back with help, either from [[Council of Angels|the Valar]] or [[God|Eru]]).
* Crowley is annoyed at getting shot in ''[[Good Omens (Literature)|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 WITHIN HIM. Yog-Sothoth is the PERSONIFICATION of this Trope.)
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== Mythology and Religion ==
* [[The Bible (Literature)|Jesus]] from Christianity and the [[Avatar|Avatars]] of Vishnu from Hinduism both are said to have been the divine taken physical form. The deaths of their physical bodies did not kill their divine selves. Indeed, Vishnu had ''ten'' Avatars, reincarnating every time Evil rose in the world and then accepting death each time once his purpose was fulfilled. Simply trying to define the Jesus/God connection is bound to result in argument, though.
* 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.
 
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== Tabletop Games ==
* There is an entire template for avatars to the gods in ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]''. The more powerful deities manifest more than one avatar at the same time; and killing one may only hinder the god itself for a time.
** Something to consider before taking on the [[Bonus Boss]] in the [[Expansion Pack]] of the second game of ''[[BaldursBaldur's Gate]]''. You can kill the avatar of Demogorgon instead of [[Sealed Evil in Aa 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 and Dragons]]'', if killed in the physical plane, are often merely said to be sent back to their home dimension. In some cases, it takes a hundred years or some [[MacGuffin]] to return, but it's not permanent.
*** [[Lampshaded]] (like [[Troperiffic|everything else in D&D]]) in the ''[[The Order of the Stick (Webcomic)|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 Asas 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.
** 3rd Edition introduced the concept of "aspects", which are really just weaker versions of avatars.
** Immortals in Classic D&D also use this strategy when entering a world. Immortals are portrayed in Classic D&D as being beyond any kind of mortal power to take on (they are completely immune to all mortal magic and cannot be harmed by any but the most powerful mortal weapons, which do only minimal damage to them) and if by some miracle you manage to take one out on the mortal plane, all you've managed to do is send him back to his home plane. And no one, not even another Immortal, can enter an Immortal's home plane without his express permission.
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** 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 interract with physical objects. The Necrontyr gave them bodies of living metal in which they could manifest and interract with mortals. Destruction of the body does no harm for the C'tan but prevents them from doing much until they get built a new one.
** 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 (Tabletop Game)|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.
* This is the normal result of killing a god or Second- or Third-Circle demon in ''[[Exalted]]''; gods just get sent back to their sanctums to recuperate, and demons of that level are capable of multiple manifestations, so killing just one of them doesn't have much of an effect. It takes unusual circumstances and/or specialized Charms to get rid of them permanently.
* In ''[[GURPS]]: Fantasy'' the god Tiamut exists like this. The avatar of hers presented in the book has Unkillable 3 so that if it dies the body vanishes until it returns unharmed with the next spring rain. Meanwhile her real body is half the matter in the universe.
* ''[[Changeling: The Lost (Tabletop Game)|Changeling: The Lost]]'' has [[The Fair Folk|the True Fae]] work like this; it's revealed in a book late in the line that the forms the Gentry take on Earth are known as "Titles," and most Gentry have more than one. They're most commonly seen on this side of Arcadia as Actors, but they can be Realms (little pocket dimensions), Props (items of great power) or Wisps (armies of hobgoblins). The Gentry constantly battle against one another for more Titles, and the only way to truly kill one of them is to make your way ''back'' to Arcadia and smash the crap out of every one of those titles.
** However, if they're truly capable of such an emotion, the True Fae ''hate'' losing one of their Titles, and if one of their Titles - particularly an actor - is in danger of being destroyed, they will often offer extremely powerful oaths to avoid this fate.
* Likewise, the Exarchs (essentially, omnipotent god-beings) of ''[[Mage: The Awakening (Tabletop Game)|Mage: The Awakening]]'' are capable of projecting aspects of themselves across the Abyss into the Fallen World, where they take more-or-less physical form. These soul sheaths, or "Ochemata", are still absurdly powerful and are quite capable of doing things like wiping out entire cities.
* ''[[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 (Tabletop Game)|KULTKult]]'' 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.
 
 
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* This is the case with the [[Cosmic Horror]] Sin from ''[[Final Fantasy X]]'', who always comes back after a period of tranquility that has come to be known as "The Calm". {{spoiler|In this case, it's a scam to make people think Sin is immortal, it's because the very method being used to "defeat" Sin actually fuels its reincarnation and return. What infected it then infects the Final Aeon that "killed" it}}.
** Your first fight against Omega Weapon turns out to be just a shadow of the real thing, which is further into the cave.
* Ganondorf from ''[[The Legend of Zelda (Franchise)|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 (Video Game)|The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time]]'' probably counts as well.
** ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Video Game)|The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess]]'': Midna also counts, at least theoretically. That cute floating imp is really just a projection of her true form.
*** Actually it's her actual physical form, cursed into an implike shape. Trying to take her on is a slightly more literal interpretation of fighting the shadow, though, because she hides out in Link's shadow in the light world (when he's in the form of a wolf she even appears on his shadow's back even though there's no imp on his actual back to cast a shadow) because light is harmful to her, and in the Twilight Realm because she's ashamed to be seen by her people looking like an adorable little imp.
* 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. {{spoiler|With the Saren Husk, however...}}
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* 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.
* Hausen and Saizou from ''[[Treasure of the Rudras]]'', you do get to kill them later in their true forms.
* An interesting variation occurs in ''[[Chrono Cross (Video Game)|Chrono Cross]]'' where the Dragon God is just the part of a bigger entity that exists outside time. When you kill the physical manifestation, it gloats that all it has to do is reform with its main self; however it's then revealed that its main self was killed by the Time Devourer long ago.
** This is also the reason you can't just destroy the [[Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?|Time Devourer]]. It will simply switch to/from a different timeline/dimension where you didn't kill it and try again.
*** Now you know how frustrated the computer feels when you [[Save Scumming|Save Scum]].
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** 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 posessed Mediev, the last Guardian, and got killed before he could transfer his spirit back to his body). In that case him appearring on Azeroth as an avatar would fit this trope.
** 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 Aa 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".
* The Shadowlords in ''[[Ultima V]]''. Each attack a different town each day; [[The Fisher King|corrupting the minds of those who live there and killing the plant life.]] Even if one manages to "kill" one in normal battle (which in itself is very, very hard) they reform immediately; as they're really aspects of the Shards of Hatred, Cowardice, and Falsehood. Only a specialized ritual involving their [[True Name]]; the Shard they correspond to, and the Flame of the Opposite alignment can destroy them permanently.
* In ''[[Persona 2]]: Innocent Sin'', the last battle is against {{spoiler|an avatar of Nyarlatothep, the Crawling Chaos, who laughs at your efforts and kills a beloved character to prove a point.}} The semi-sequel, ''Eternal Punishment'', makes things a little more permanent.
* ''[[Persona 3]]'' [[Exactly What It Says Onon 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 {{spoiler|implied to be killed again by Ivo at the end.}}
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** 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 (Video Game)|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|Mons]].]]
 
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* 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 and Dragons]]'' lich, Xykon of ''[[The Order of the Stick (Webcomic)|Order of the Stick]]'' is like this- if his body is destroyed, his soul will simply retreat to his [[Soul Jar]] and create another one, rendering him nearly impossible to kill. {{spoiler|Of course, that said [[Soul Jar]] is now ''missing'' puts a bit of a crimp in this...}}
* The Bloodgrem from ''[[El Goonish Shive (Webcomic)|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 (Wiki)|SCP Foundation]]'' researcher[http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/incident-076-2-682\] has raised the possibility that this is the true nature of the [[Nigh Invulnerable]] SCPs [http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-682 SCP-682] and [http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-076 SCP-076-2].
* In ''[[Fine Structure (Literature)|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]].
 
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* 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: theThe 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]] episde "Twilight", where Hawkgirl smashes Brainiac to pieces, apparently killing him- only for the team to be immediately surrounded by ''dozens'' of identical Brainiacs, all of which are identical extensions of the central consciousness. Yikes.
** 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 genuinelly dead. The latter was fully reformed in the [[Grand Finale]], {{spoiler|but only as part of a resurrected [[Darkseid]]. His personality is now totally subsumed by the latter, and the latter was destroyed and even if he comes back}}, currently this Brainiac can be considered [[Deader Than Dead]].
*** 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.
 
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