Left for Dead: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
{{quote|''"You were DEAD!"''
''[[Unexplained Recovery|"I got better!"]]''|Captain Sheridan, ''[[Babylon 5]]''}}
'''For the video game, see ''[[
A character is so obviously dead that the attacker just walks away instead of [[Make Sure He's Dead|putting one in his brain]] and making him [[Deader Than Dead]]. Inevitably the character is [[Not Quite Dead]] and will come back to seek his vengeance on the original attacker, who will say [[Captain Obvious|"You're alive!"]] in shock.
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Closely related to [[Not Quite Dead]] and [[No One Could Survive That]]. See also [[Unexplained Recovery]].
{{deathtrope}}
{{examples}}
▲== Anime & Manga ==
* Happens too many times to count - [[What an Idiot!|and too many times to tolerate]] - in ''[[Bleach]]''. If any of the villains had ever had the good sense to cut off the loser's head, the series would be over around episode ten. But no, they always just walk away satisfied that the point was proven.
* Freeza in ''[[Dragonball Z]]'' survives an exploding planet after being left for dead by Goku, after which it's [[Retcon|RetConned]] that he survives, and comes back to Earth (with a mechanised body) to exact revenge. In the end, however, he is easily killed by a super powerful [[Kid From the Future]].
* Lampshaded in [[Fate/stay
* Happens TWICE in ''[[Gundam Seed Destiny]]'', first when the Archangel is blown up just as it goes underwater and Kira's Freedom is run through by the Impulse and dumped in the ocean, second when the GOUF that Athrun and Meyrin were escaping on is sliced in half by the Destiny and ''also'' dumped in the ocean.
** To be fair, usually when Shinn stabbed someone through the cockpit (and the suit exploded), they don't usually (read: NEVER) live. On top of that, the Freedom had a friggin nuke engine that went critical. The two were not so much left for dead, but rather lived through an extremely lucky scenario. I mean, who lives through a point-blank Nuclear Explosion!?
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** In his first fight with Luffy, he impaled him in the chest with his hook and buried him in quicksand. Luffy survived thanks to the help of Mrs All-Sunday
** And in the second fight with Luffy, he drained all the moisture of Luffy's body, leaving him as a mummy. He still survived thanks to having [[It Makes Sense in Context|shot water]] to Crocodile before, falling into his dehydrated body and saving him.
* At the end of [[Higurashi no Naku Koro
* What Gin and Vodka do to Kudou Shinichi in the first chapter/episode of [[Detective Conan]]. Not suspecting the seven-year-old is him is one thing, but seriously? Walking away like that just because you'd fed him an 'untraceable poison?' You're supposed to be super-professionals at this game.
** And that's not even getting into how they clearly just sort of stuck the pill in his mouth and made no effort to actually force-feed him. Seriously, the anime shows the water they pour in to wash it down running straight out the other side again! Except he obviously did swallow it since [[It Was His Sled|he shrunk]].
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== Film ==
* In ''[[Revenge of the Sith]],'' Clone troopers shoot at Obi-
** Had Obi-Wan just force-pushed the limbless Vader into that lava pit, the entire original ''[[Star Wars]]'' trilogy would never have happened. Of course, that would be worth several Dark Side points for Obi-Wan, so it's somewhat justified that he wouldn't.
*** Though that could've just been seen as putting his padawan out of his misery.
*** Given that the Emperor was alive and well and only died because Vader killed him, the choice to not kill Vader there saved the galaxy. Maybe Obi-Wan got a sense of that.
**** The novelization of the movie says that Obi-Wan sensed Palpatine's arrival and knew that if he and the others didn't leave ASAP they'd all be dead.
* 006 in the pre-credits sequence of ''[[
** This is a [[Played With Trope|weird example.]] 006 was shot point blank in the head by [[The Dragon|Ourimov]], so Bond was really only leaving a dead body behind in the explosion. {{spoiler|Or so he thought. 006 had Ourimov fake his death, a plan which almost went off the rails when 007 not only escaped, but lowered the timer on the planted explosives, nearly killing them all. In the end, 006 was only
* [[Dark Knight Trilogy|The Dark Knight]]:
{{quote|
'''{{spoiler|Harvey Dent}}''': ''"Half."'' }}
* ''[[Kill Bill]]'' has the Bride being
** ''Kill Bill 2'' likewise features the Bride being
* Inverted in ''[[The Matrix]]''. Smith empties more or less an entire magazine from his Desert Eagle into Neo's chest before checking he's dead and leaving. THEN Neo gets back up and hands Smith his ass, marking the point at which he becomes [[The Messiah|the one]].
* 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 and is left for dead by his companions since [[No One Could Survive That]].
== Literature ==
* {{spoiler|Sandor Clegane}}, of ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'', ''might'' apply
** Looking more likely that he's alive, considering that we're ''told'' he's dead but shown ''evidence'' that he's alive. This is ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'', you don't take ''anyone'' at their word, even priests. At any rate, just the fact that Arya left him assuming he'd die is enough to qualify for the trope.
* Managing an intentional version of this is a [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]] for (Sir!) Horace Harkness in the ''[[
** Notably, the Peep tactical officer on the scene, Shannon Foraker, is good enough that even this doesn't fool her entirely. Both she and her commander, Vice-Admiral Tourville, simply fail to voice any suspicions to their superiors, and delete the data in question that might lead to a more in depth investigation.
*** Closer to the trope, Haven's leadership as a whole has a colossal backfire from this when not only does Honor come back, but comes back after they broadcast her faked execution over every major network. It's hard to say whether the people she rescued or her own survival hurt Haven more.
* In the novel ''Relentless'', Morgan's lover Payton pushed her out of the way of a cave in. Unable to find help or to free him on her own, she held his hand until [[He's Dead, Jim|it went cold]], and then left. When he shows up years later {{spoiler|as The Thresher}}, she is understandably astonished, and he, of course, resentful that she didn't try hard enough to save him.
* This happends quite a bit across the enitre ''[[Dune]]'' series, though most notable when [[The Hero|Paul]] and [[Action Mom|Jessica]] are left for dead after flying right into a storm that was meant to [[
* The Japanese novel ''Black Rain'' by Masuji Ibuse follows a Hiroshima family who were victims of the nuclear bomb. At one point they encounter another family who, panicking and unable to free their nine-year-old son from their burning house, flee and leave the boy for dead. Eventually the kid manages to free himself, and, in what must surely be the [[Understatement]] of the year, his reunion with his family is described as "rather awkward".
== Live
* In the ''[[Lost]]'' season 4 finale, the Others, who really ought to know better, leave {{spoiler|Keamy for dead, not taking into account the body armor he's wearing.}}
* In ''[[Supernatural]]'' - ''Born Under A Bad Sign'', if [[Demonic Possession|Meg!Sam]] had actually checked that Dean had actually drowned instead of checking and then leaving, s/he could have enjoyed Sam's body for a hell of a lot longer.
* In the ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'' season 1 finale, Sylar is
** This happens again in the Volume 3 finale, after he gets stabbed in the back of the head which supposedly nullifies his regeneration powers. Even though there is no sign this time that he escaped, (trapped in an exploding building, after all) [[Like You Would Really Do It|No one (in the audience) believed this death would stick]]. The fact that just seconds before they had just built up a storyline for Sylar to track down his true parents helped reinforce this belief in the audience.
* Season 1 finale of ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'': The Master catches Buffy deep in his subterranean vampire lair, drains her, and dumps her face-first in a pool. What more needs to be done? Besides making sure Xander doesn't man up, go into an underground vamp playpen, and perform CPR on the Buffster, that is. The Master lives to regret it. About half an hour.
** In fairness to the Master, she ''was'' dead, just not brain dead.
* In ''[[Doctor Who]]'', the Doctor is
== Music ==
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== Video Games ==
* ''[[Left 4 Dead]]'' was NAMED for this trope. In both games, the setup is while the army was evacuating survivors of the [[Zombie Apocalypse
** While plot-wise it makes sense, leaving someone for dead in gameplay is one of the worst mistakes one can make, since many situations require a helping hand out of (getting pinned by a hunter, strangled by a smoker, hanging off a cliff, etc.).
** Depending on the situation, sometimes it is better to defy logic and leave incapacitated survivors to die outside the safe room/rescue vehicle since sometimes going back to help can result in you getting in trouble or getting the whole team wiped out, forcing a restart of the map.
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* ''[[Final Fantasy IV]]'' places the [[Not Quite Dead]] blunder on the heroes' shoulders - when {{spoiler|protecting the Dark Crystal in the Dwarven Castle}}, Cecil and company are taken out one by one from Golbez's Shadow Dragon. {{spoiler|Rydia}}, previously thought dead ([[Arbitrary Headcount Limit|not uncommon in this game]]), appears and takes out the dragon just before it can kill Cecil, allowing them to turn the battle around and fell Golbez. The party is so overjoyed that {{spoiler|Rydia}} is still alive that they start to leave [[Why Don't Ya Just Shoot Him|without checking how alive Golbez is]] - he manages to get up, grab {{spoiler|the Crystal}}, and warp out.
* In the first ''[[Overlord]]'' game it is revealed towards the end that {{spoiler|the player was left for dead in the Tower by his companions, the fallen heroes you've been killing}}.
* ''[[Breath of Fire]] IV'' possibly takes this trope to its extreme in the [[Trauma Conga Line]] of attempts by [[Evil Empire|the Fou Empire]] to kill its [[King in
* This trope serves as the set-up for the Courier in ''[[Fallout: New Vegas]]''.
** In the attacker's defense, he did ''shoot the Courier in the head'' (it might not have gotten deep into the brain, but still), and then buried him. Just, that wasn't enough to kill the Courier (or even necessarily cause any real permanent brain damage), and someone was on hand to dig the Courier out and bring him to a doctor as soon as the bad guys left.
* [[Deus Ex: Human Revolution
* From ''[[Max Payne (
** In the first game, Nicole Horne leaves Max to die at the Punchinello Manor after injecting him with an OD of Valkyr.
** The second game has {{spoiler|Vladimir Lem}} shooting Max in the head with a Desert Eagle (which would be fatal in any other universe) before leaving him.
== Web Comics ==
* Kusari [https://web.archive.org/web/20081227181802/http://beta.sluggy.com/daily.php?date=010304 leaves Oasis for dead] after their first battle in ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]''. Oasis actually ''does'' die from her wounds, but dying has [[Death Is Cheap|never slowed her down much]].
* Luke from ''[[
** {{spoiler|Mark}} also comes back after being {{spoiler|shot, dumped in a river, and}} supposed dead.
** In fact, {{spoiler|it turns out ANY Freakangel who ever dies will just come back.}}
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* [[Disney Animated Canon|Disney's]] ''[[The Lion King]]'': Simba is Left For Dead in the middle of a burning desert, only to be later rescued by Timon and Pumbaa.
** Simba was supposed to have been finished off by the hyenas, but they blundered this (as usual) -- and of course weren't going to tell Scar about their failure.
* Peter Griffin's fights with the giant chicken in ''[[Family Guy]]'' end with Peter finally triumphing over the chicken and leaving. Then the camera zooms in and the chicken opens one eye over a [[Sting (music)|Sting]].
** Peter never thinks to wring its neck and make a chicken dinner (though they did make peace and [[Go-Karting
* Morto does this after a round with the titular hero in ''Birdman''.
* A parody of ''[[Kill Bill]]'' in ''[[Drawn Together]]'' Season 2, when Wooldor Sockbat is likewise buried in a coffin, and is likewise able to escape ala the video game ''Dig Dug''. One character responds "THAT requires no further explanation!" to underscore how it's never explained how the Bride's feat was possible, since her martial arts training had never involved being a human oil-drill.
* In the 2003 ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2003
* In ''[[
* In ''[[Sym-Bionic Titan]]'' Modula was genuinely believed dead by the king, but Modula considers it abandonment.
* In ''[[Shrek the Third]]'', Prince Charming seems to perish in the end, smashed flat when Dragon knocks an entire tower over that falls on him. But it seems he somehow survived, as he appears briefly at the end of the ''Thriller Night'' short.
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[[Category:Death Tropes]]
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