Not Quite Dead/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A character takes a seemingly fatal amount of damage, yet survives.

  • Straight: Alice beats Emperor Evulz, then throws him off a cliff and drowns him. He shows up a few episodes later, ready for revenge.
  • Exaggerated: Alice beats Emperor Evulz, then throws him off a cliff, drowns him, and orders a tactical airstrike over that part of the sea. She then orders a giant fishing boat to fish those waters clean and freeze everything they catch. However, despite all this, Emperor Evulz still comes back.
  • Justified: Emperor Evulz is very resilient. It takes a truly amazing amount of punishment to do him in.
    • That's not really Emperor Evulz she killed. He just made a weak doppelganger to fool Alice.
    • Emperor Evulz had a way of healing quickly, possibly Healing Factor or a device, and it would take a very detailed destruction of him to kill his body off for good.
  • Inverted: Emperor Evulz dies permanently as soon as Alice displays the slightest bit of force.
  • Subverted: Alice is uneasy, expecting him to return at any moment. After a while, it becomes clear that he's dead for real.
  • Double Subverted: However, after a few months, he comes back, explaining that he only survived because he put himself into a temporary death state to survive her onslaught of attacks.
  • Parodied: Emperor Evulz has an overly long "death" animation.
  • Deconstructed: Evulz' survival truly stymies Alice, which in turn makes her feel like her only option is to give up fighting - if she can't truly kill him, what good is she?
  • Reconstructed: Alice, though frightened at her archenemy's return, realizes that she has to train and get stronger in order to kill him for real.
  • Zig Zagged: Alice is expecting Emperor Evulz to return at any moment. And after a while, he does. However, as soon as he appears and explains to Alice how he's still alive, she kicks his ass and kills him off for real.
  • Averted: Emperor Evulz dies the first time.
  • Enforced: "OK, so Emperor Evulz has a lot of fans who would get pissed if he died. But Alice is The Hero and she has to win. Wait, I've got it..."
  • Lampshaded: "I know you thought I was dead, but that's why pencils have erasers!"
  • Invoked: Emperor Evulz decides to goad Alice into throwing him into the ocean so he can live to fight another day.
  • Defied: Alice, not entirely sure that Evulz is dead, decides to go make sure.
  • Discussed: "I don't know...I know I just killed Evulz, but I have this incredibly odd feeling in the back of my mind that he's just going to show up again to fight me."
  • Conversed: "Ah, I know how this thing ends. Right after they begin their celebration party for finally having killed the bad guy, he's gonna show up, ready and raring for Round Two."

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