Out of Continues: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''My only consolation is that true death comes closer with each dying.''|'''The Alien Inventor''', ''[[The Dig]]''}}

See also [[Living Onon Borrowed Time]], where a character is ''already'' technically dead, but has had their life artificially extended.

* In ''[[Fate/stay Stay Night|Fate Stay/Nightnight]]'', Berserker has quite a few lives, {{spoiler|Rin takes one, Archer takes 5, and Saber takes the rest at the same time. Hax.}}

* In ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro Nini]]'', {{spoiler|[[God Was My Co-Pilot|Hanyuu]]'s ability to [[Groundhog Day Loop|send Rika back in time when she dies]] is each time less effective than the last}}, so the second season's final chapter cranks up the drama when it's revealed that there's only one more chance to [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong|get things right]].

* One EC horror comic from the fifties (later adapted into a ''[[Tales Fromfrom the Crypt]]'' episode) had a doctor discover that [[Cats Have Nine Lives|a cat does have nine lives]] thanks to a special gland, and also that he can transfer it into a human. He performs the process on a man, and they then go into show business. (Cause you know, [[Cut Lex Luthor a Check|that's the only possible use for it.]]) The man becomes "Ulric the Undying," and does things like leaping over Niagara Falls and getting the electric chair. For his grand finale (his eighth life) he'll be sealed into a coffin and buried alive for three hours. As he lies there, he reflects on the whole experience...and then [[Mandatory Twist Ending|realizes]] that the process of transferring the gland ''killed the cat'', thus that one life had already been spent. Oops.

* Slightly related: in the [[John Travolta (Creator)]] movie ''Michael'', Michael is using his very last trip to earth.

* One of the purported uses of the [[Philosopher's Stone]] is granting eternal life. Many a tale involves the consequences of its destruction; modern examples include ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist]]'' and ''[[Harry Potter and Thethe Philosopher's Stone (novel)|Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone]]''. In the latter, it is revealed that [[Historical Domain Character|Nicholas Flamel]] successfully created the eponymous artifact and has kept himself and his wife alive for over 600 years with it. However, since Voldemort seeks the Stone as a means of resurrecting himself, [[Heroic Sacrifice|Nicholas Flamel and his wife agree that the Stone must be destroyed, and they accept the consequences of doing so]].

** Another example from ''[[Harry Potter]]'' would be Voldemort's Horcruxes, a set of [[Soul Jar|Soul Jars]]s he created to ensure his immortality. By the end of the seventh book, they've all been destroyed through the efforts of Harry and his friends.

** The titular objects from ''[[Harry Potter and Thethe Deathly Hallows (novel)|Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows]]'' can, in theory, allow someone to evade death indefinitely if they have all three. But in the story that speaks of the hallows, all three result in death eventually, though the Invisibility Cloak prolongs life the longest.

*** The novel heavily implies that [[Don't Fear the Reaper|death aintain't so bad anyway]] and that it's best greeted as a friend.

* Saash in ''[[The Book of Night Withwith Moon]]'' by [[Diane Duane]] is a cat on her ninth life.

* In the ''Chrestomanci'' series by [[Diana Wynne Jones]], several characters have nine lives. Only one story in the series, "Stealer of Souls", deals with an [[Out of Continues]] situation.

* Weyoun of ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]]'' is killed more than once, and brought back via cloning. In the final season, during the Dominion War, the place where his clones are created and/or stored is destroyed, and he is killed during the finale. It's stated that this was his last clone. (Do we have to say that the [[Expanded Universe]] had more turn up the first chance it got?)

* A ''[[Promethean: The Created|Promethean]]'': A Promethean starts its existence with one free resurrection on its account... assuming it has more than one Azoth dot. Once it dies, all but the one dot burn away and it gets back up, but the next death will finish it. Osirans (and those other Prometheans willing to pay for it) start with a power called Revivification, which lets them expend their own Azoth to bring back fallen Prometheans (at an ever-increasing price), and which sacrifices itself to raise them if they fall rather than expend the "free" revival. It can be repurchased, but once you don't have the experience or Vitriol to rebuy it and have expended your resurrection, assuming you don't have any friends willing to give up their own progress for you, you've run out of continues as a Promethean.

* ''[[Unreal Tournament III (Video Game)3|Unreal Tournament III]]'' uses the [[Hand Wave]] of "respawn teleporters" to explain how people can die and return; [[Out of Continues]], in this context, means your teleporter's out of juice.

* ''[[Eat Lead: theThe Return of Matt Hazard]]'' uses this at the end of the first level, where Matt is told that someone hacked the game to erase all his saves, so that when he died, he would die for good.

* The page quote comes from the Alien Inventor from [[Lucas ArtsLucasArts]]' ''[[The Dig]]'', who sealed himself away in a pyramid so that future generations who arrived on the planet could revive him (using the very same life crystals he invented) and learn of his grievous errors. Chatting with him reveals that the crystals' effect wears off with each subsequent use, until the crystals fail to resurrect the subject at all. He himself dies mere minutes after each revival, though whether it's due to the crystals failing or his own desires is left unsaid.

* It is implied early on that the protagonist of ''[[Immortal Defense]]'' and his fellow path defenders are a case of this: their minds may be immortal and nigh-godlike entities in pathspace, capable of raining destruction upon countless fleets of enemy ships, but destroying their original physical bodies will kill them. {{spoiler|It's later revealed that this is an outright lie. Path defenders exist independently of their bodies: they cannot be killed, period, nor can they ever return to their physical forms. [[Blessed Withwith Suck|This is]] [[Cursed Withwith Awesome|not necessarily]] [[Fate Worse Than Death|a good]] [[And I Must Scream|thing.]]}}

* In a ''[[Captain SNES]]'' [http://www.captainsnes.com/2005/11/05/501-hidden-price/ episode], it dawns on ''[[Mega Man (Videovideo Gamegame)|Mega Man]]'' that the building where extra lives are made has been blown up to bits.

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