Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: Difference between revisions

When a character who is alive is mistakenly believed to be dead. Quite often includes the character being shown his own death certificate. Often includes being declared [[Legally Dead]], but isn't necessarily restricted to that.

 

 

{{deathtrope}}

== [[Anime]] & [[Manga]] ==

* Madara Uchiha/Tobi, in ''[[Naruto]]'', since everyone in the story thought that he died a long time ago. Some fans theorize that he actually IS dead; the story proper hasn't yet revealed exactly what's going on with him.

 

== [[Film]] ==

* The same thing was done previously to John Wayne's character in "Big Jake". Eventually, Big Jake gets so annoyed, he promises to kill the next person to say it to him.

* In ''[[Cast Away]]'', Chuck Noland is declared dead after being stranded on a deserted island for years. They even held a funeral for him.

* Played with in ''[[Star Trek: First Contact]]''. "Reports of my assimilation are greatly exaggerated."

* In the fourth ''[[Pirates of the Caribbean]]'' film, Jack Sparrow relates the ([[Real Life]]) myth of how the body of Blackbeard swam three times around a navy vessel after it'd been decapitated. As he relates this story ''to'' Blackbeard, who's alive and intact, this trope presumably applies within the PotC Verse.

* [[Tekken: Blood Vengeance|Heihachi Mishima]] [[The Reveal|is not as dead as most people think.]] [[Melee a Trois|He shows up for the three-way brawl between himself, his son and grandson.]]

'''Heihachi:''' Ha! If you thought that was enough to kill me, you are gravely mistaken. }}

 

* [[Honor Harrington]] says a variation on the line when she returns to Manticore in ''Ashes Of Victory''. In this case, not only has she been gone for the better part of two years, but the [[People's Republic of Tyranny|People's Republic of Haven]] actually faked footage of her ''execution'' and broadcast it throughout the galaxy. This causes a lot of complications, not least of which that her estate has been divided up according to her will. Honor is less bothered by this than by certain memorials to her...

* In [[Lewis Carroll]]'s ''[[Sylvie and Bruno]]'', the Vice-Warden arranges for a false report of his brother's death.

"Well, it's supposed so: but, mind you, I don't believe it! The evidence is very weak—mere hear-say. A wandering Jester, with a Dancing-Bear (they found their way into the Palace, one day) has been telling people he comes from Fairyland, and that the Warden died there. I wanted the Vice-Warden to question him, but, most unluckily, he and my Lady were always out walking when the Jester came round. Yes, the Warden's supposed to be dead!" And more tears trickled down the old man's cheeks.'' }}

* Possibly as a [[Shout-Out]] to [[Mark Twain]], one book in ''[[Animorphs]]'' sees a new alien race that according to Ax was killed off millennia ago. "Reports of their extinction may have been exaggerated" indeed, they're trying to kill us right now.

* ''[[The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time]]'': Christopher's father told him his mother died. Then Christopher finds all the letters she's been writing to him since she left his father.

* In ''[[Temeraire|Victory of Eagles]]'', Laurence is presumed dead after the ship he was supposed to be on is sunk by the French.

* There's an episode of ''[[The Golden Girls]]'' in which Blanche's spurned boyfriend, an obituary editor, runs her obituary to get back at her. Blanche is more upset that he claimed she was 68 than being listed as dead.

* One ''[[My Two Dads]]'' episode has a typo in an obituary causing everyone to think Joey was dead. He goes along with it for a while to sell art, because [[Dead Artists Are Better]].

* In ''[[Coronation Street]]'' Jerry's father put his own obituary in the newspaper.

* Archie Bunker was misreported as dead by the Veterans Administration for one episode of ''[[All in The Family]].''

* In ''[[Babylon 5]]'', John Sheridan was thought to be dead. "I was. I got better." He spends a long time cleaning up the consequences of this.

* In ''[[The Sarah Jane Adventures]]'' episode "The Death of the Doctor"...well, [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|you can guess]].

* ''[[Game of Thrones]]'': "I see that the rumors of your demise were unfounded."

* Happens on more than one occasion in ''[[Doctor Who]]'':

* Jonathan Doors is shot by a sniper in the pilot of ''[[Earth The Final Conflict]]'', protecting the Taelon ambassador Da'an. Turns out, it was all a setup. The sniper was working for Doors and was shooting blanks, as was the doctor who confirmed his death. The goal was to set up [[La Résistance]] to figure out the real reason the Taelons came to Earth. A few episodes later, Doors publicly outs himself, using a similar line to this trope.

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* ''[[Escape from Monkey Island]]'' starts with Elaine discovering that because she spent so much time out of the government of her islands, she was declared dead and had to get re-elected.

'''Guybrush Threepwood''': Won't that make you a flesh-eating zombie? }}

* In ''[[Mass Effect]] 2'', Shepard was dead for two years, which leads to trouble when (s)he returns to the Citadel and is picked up by the security scanners as being dead. Fortunately, a [[Reasonable Authority Figure|friendly C-Sec officer]] changes the records without making him/her jump through all the hoops (s)he would normally have to go through.

** You can also have them keep you out of the system, so to security you don't exist. This may have benefits in the third game, as Cerberus is listed as a terrorist organization, which doesn't normally help people stay out of the eyes of the law, Spectre or not.

* Doctor Halsey quotes this trope in ''[[Halo: Reach]]''. The casualty reports had listed her as K.I.A., or so Noble Team thought.

** Near the beginning of the level "Uprising" in ''[[Halo 2]]'', the Arbiter runs into some friendly forces. He's greeted with "The Arbiter! I thought he was dead!"

* The ''[[Fallout: New Vegas]]'' add-on, ''Lonesome Road'' adds a perk, "Thought You Died", which is basically this.

* [[Resident Evil|Albert Wesker and later, Jill Valentine]] both fall under this trope; Wesker in Code: Veronica and Jill in Resident Evil 5.

* In the Original Trilogy, [[Ninja Gaiden|Irene Lew]] is thought to have been killed in the opening of the third game. She shows up later on and she is not very happy with her former boss trying to kill her.

 

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

* ''Mickey's April Fools'', has Mickey Mouse pretending to die in front of Mortimer as an April Fools prank. Mickey then gets a letter declaring he's inherited a million dollars, but he can't get it because he's supposed to be dead.

* [[The Simpsons (animation)|Homer Simpson]] did it to escape a day of work. It eventually led to him discovering his long-lost mother, whose ''own'' death had been greatly exaggerated decades previously by Homer's father. She then fakes her death AGAIN at the end of the episode.

** Lisa was also presumed dead at one point, owing the fact that she was supposed to be camping an ancient redwood when it got hit by lightning (which, as it turns out, [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|was caused by the bucket she had in the tree]]). She refused to come clean because her "death" was inspiring the people, but finally did when it was twisted by the rich Texan guy ([[His Name Really Is "Barkeep"|whose name is actually Rich Texan]]) into publicity for his new amusement park.

** The third time also involved the [[Grim Reaper]], but he was just there, he didn't harvest. Peter, Cleveland, Joe and Quagmire all get stranded on a deserted island for quite some time, and are declared dead. Peter has to save his marriage since Brian married Lois during that time.

* In ''[[Futurama]]'', Cubert was able to take over Planet Express because the Professor had been declared dead as a tax dodge.

* [[Dilbert (animation)|Dilbert]] had all of his benefits cut at work after spending a short period of time dead.

* An episode of [[South Park]] featured a guy being frozen for almost three years. He comes back to his wife who says that she assumed he was dead and married someone else and now had two kids, aged 8 and 15. After awhile, the guy says, "Wait, 8 and 15?".

== [[Real Life]] ==

* The [[Trope Namer]] is Samuel "[[Mark Twain]]" Clemens, who gave the trope title as a statement in response to hearing that his obituary had been published in the New York Journal. The Journal had mistakenly reported the illness of his cousin James Ross Clemens (who [[Not Quite Dead|wasn't actually dead]], either) as Twain's own death. The original quote was:

* On August 27, 2008, Bloomberg accidentally published a 17 page obituary regarding Steve Jobs' death. In a subsequent public appearance Jobs joked about the accident by displaying on screen, "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."

* A newspaper mistakenly published an obituary for Alfred Nobel, instead of his deceased brother. Nobel was shocked to see himself called "merchant of death" for his invention of dynamite, and was inspired to start the Nobel Prize so that he would be remembered for something else. It worked.

* In India, it's popular to bribe an official to declare a relative dead so that you can inherit his property. It has all the advantages of murder without the unpleasant messiness.

* In the aftermath of the [[Velvet Revolution|17th November 1989 demonstration]], a rumor has spread that a student named Martin Šmíd was killed during the event. This turned to be a misinformation; a student of that name was at the demonstration, but left before the police intervention began. He was interviewed in the television, presumably to dispel the rumor...and the transmission started at just the wrong moment when he was saying, referring to the events of the day: "Death touched me." (In case this figure of speech doesn't translate well to English, he meant: "I was horrified.")

* Some accidental premature publishings on cnn.com revealed that CNN at least has outlines and some graphics prepared for obituaries of famous people, like Dick Cheney and Queen Elizabeth, who have yet to die in anticipation of eventually having to get one up on short notice.

* For a complete list of premature obituaries, check out [[wikipedia:List of premature obituaries|The Other Wiki]].

* Although he was never officially declared to be dead, a very popular meme in the late 1960s suggested that [[Paul McCartney]] had died in a car accident around the mid 1960s and was replaced by a lookalike, which really took off in the underground media. The fact that the 'evidence' for this theory largely seemed to stem from a number of obscure and oblique 'references' on [[Beatles]] album covers and in song lyrics suggested that large quantities of drugs being ingested probably had something to do with it, but the rumours bedeviled McCartney for years no matter how many times he denied them, including a variation on the Mark Twain 'quote' above: "Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated. If I were dead I'd be the last to know."

* A few years ago, there were a number of rumors that actress [[Natasha Lyonne]] was at death's door, due to various drug addictions. According to [[IMDb]], she's still alive.

* A popular rumor in the 70's and 80's was that Jerry Mathers (of ''[[Leave It to Beaver]]'' fame) had been killed in Vietnam. Not only is he quite alive and still acting, he never even served in Vietnam.

* At the Battle of Hastings in 1066, a rumour suddenly swept through [[William The Conqueror]]'s army that Duke William had been killed. The Duke heard of this and took his helmet off so that his army could recognise his red hair. He proceeded to win the battle and complete the [[Norman Conquest]].

* When [[Queen Victoria]] was in her final years, it was frequently reported that she had died and implied that they were just pretending she was still alive to keep her son off the throne.

* Steve from [[Blue's Clues]] was surprised to hear he had died and been replaced with a lookalike. No matter how many times he said he was still alive, some people still believed he was dead.

* In describing the assessments of his medical condition once given to him by various doctors, composer Frederic Chopin commented "I have been sick as a dog during these past two weeks. Three doctors have visited me. The first said I was going to die; the second said I was breathing my last; and the third said I was already dead."

[[Category:Older Than Radio]]

[[Category:Infauxmation Desk]]