Undeath Always Ends: Difference between revisions

 

Whether a vampire, lich, mummy, or rarer fare, you can rest assured that by the story's end any notable undead character will not be undead because of one of the following:

* The character is killed by someone else (hero, villain; doesn't matter which).

* The character, [[Who Wants to Live Forever?|unhappy]] with [[What Have I Become?|his/her undead state]], [[Driven to Suicide|commits suicide]] or convinces the heroes to slay/vanquish/exorcise him/her.

It seems that not all undeath is equal - some undead are deader than others. More living undead, such as vampires, are less likely to fit this trope than less living undead (such as zombies). This trope seems to apply most strongly to ghosts, who are often called simply 'dead' even though they're technically undead. Vampires favor [[Suicide by Sunlight]].

 

{{examples}}

 

== Anime ==

* [[Bleach]]'s afterlife is a bit messy and it's a little hard to say exactly how it fits into this trope. For starters, there are Pluses, good spirits. They have three possible outcomes: A) Be sent to Soul Society by a Shinigami, B) Get eaten by a Hollow, or C) Become a Hollow yourself. For Hollows, you A) Get killed by a Shinigami, sending your now pure spirit to Soul Society, B) Get killed by a Shinigami, sending your evil-as-a-human spirit to Hell, C) Get killed by a Quincy, AKA, end of the line, D) Get eaten by another, stronger Hollow, or E) Eat other Hollows and eventually become stronger forms of Hollows. It becomes even more confusing when you get to the Soul Society...

* Happens ''by the wazoo'' in [[Saint Seiya]]'s Hades Saga. {{spoiler|To both good guys ''and'' enemies.}}

* The end of [[Let the Right One In]] averts this trope in that {{spoiler|Eli is still "living" as a vampire at the end of the film. What's more, "she" now has Oskar with her whom she might turn into a vampire as well, or keep around as her new caretaker (it's never mentioned how old that father figure was when he first met here).}} It could be argued that before she met Oskar, Eli was unhappy with her vampiric existence, but meeting Oskar gave her a new lease on unlife.

* At the conclusion of ''[[Corpse Bride]]'', when Victor chooses to marry Victoria, the titular undead bride wishes them luck and then disappears into butterflies. Presumably she ascended to some higher plane rather than the afterlife seen in the movie.

* In the movie ''[[Fright Night]]'' (1985), Jerry Dandrige (vampire) and his ghoul servant end up dead, and Charley's girlfriend Amy (turned into a vampire) is returned to life.

** But subverted in the movie's final frames, where we learn that {{spoiler|Evil Ed was only playing possum.}}

* Averted in [[Anne Rice]]'s ''The Mummy, or Ramses the Damned.'' The Elixir of Life makes living creatures totally indestructible. If chopped to pieces, the parts will become independently animate. If incinerated, they will reconstitute. Naturally, the full ramifications of this are utterly horrifying once grasped.

* Averted and played straight in [[The Death Gate Cycle]]. Prince Edmund frees many of the undead in a drawn-out campaign of attrition, but remains undead himself. Hugh the Hand is allowed to die before the final battle against Sang-Drax.

 

 

** On the other hand, there is only the word of an evil demon that signing it away would really work. Even if it did, there is another vampire with a soul running around and the prophesy is ridiculously vague...

*** The ''After the Fall'' comics revealed that {{spoiler|while Angel did indeed sign away his destiny, Wolfram & Hart never filed it. They still need him to flip out and kill everything.}}

* ''[[Torchwood]]'' had a particularly disturbing variant on this: Owen is turned into a kind of undead in the middle of the series and remains that way for several episodes until the end of the series. He can't feel pain, can't eat or drink (since food just settles in his stomach), any wounds sustained do not heal (and have to be sewn up weekly) and worst of all, he can no longer have sex. {{spoiler|At the end of the series, he "dies" when he is trapped in a nuclear reactor and [[Nightmare Fuel|his body literally melts into goo, with him remaining conscious until the very end]]}}.

* In one episode of ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' a student from Buffy's school reanimates the body of his dead brother (who says he shouldn't have been brought back) and stitches together parts of different women to make him a girlfriend. Buffy and company are [[Debate and Switch|spared the moral dilemma]] of deciding his fate when a fire breaks out in the house and the corpse-brother dies while trying to retrieve his future bride.

 

== Tabletop RPG ==

** In ''[[Promethean: The Created]]'', the Created want to end their undying, unliving nature by [[Humanity Ensues|completing the Great Work and becoming human]], but frankly, [[Blessed with Suck|can you blame them?]] Even then, Mr. Verney, [[Frankenstein's Monster]], is still going after several centuries, much to his regret. Note that, although Prometheans generally only get a couple centuries, "going to the wastes" (complete isolation from humanity and their powers) can extend this clock, which many take advantage of to extend their deadline to complete the Great Work; [[White Wolf]] leaves it open whether Verney and the other Progenitors (founders of Promethean lines) are truly immortal or just punctual about going to the wastes.

** In ''[[Mummy: The Resurrection|Mummy the Resurrection]]'', the Undying spend time 'temporarily undead'. When they die for the first time, they're undead until they receive the Spell of Life, which returns them to true life and grants them [[Resurrective Immortality]]. Every time they die after that, their spirit spends some time in the Underworld before resurrection. It takes exceptional circumstances to finally kill them - utter annihilation or a genuine desire to die.

** The wraiths of ''[[Wraith: The Oblivion]]'' have three options: Oblivion, and utter destruction; [[Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence|Transcendence]], and an ambiguous fate; or remain in the Underworld. Some older wraiths have been around for thousands of years.

** Second Edition AD&D also had a unique form of Elven Lich that 'lived' for the sole purpose of hunting down other undead and destroying them. As this would clearly not be possible simply because they occur more rapidly than the elven kind can kill them, and that such endeavors are innately dangerous, it's not certain whether or not they would live that much longer than a normal elf would, especially in worlds where Elves can count their potential lifespans in millenia and not centuries.

** Shows up also in a host of [[Forgotten Realms]] modules and books, including several moments where the various undead elves complain about being dead for so long, despite canonically only approaching old age as an elf.

 

== Video Games ==

* All of the Unsent in ''[[Final Fantasy X]]'' and its sequel are eventually sent to the afterlife, generally by Yuna, willingly or not.

* ''[[Heroes of Might and Magic]] 3'': {{spoiler|The end of the campaign does multiple versions, the revived king Gryphonheart kills his original murderer in a darkly humorous cutscene. His soul then leaves his body.}}

* Anyone who is resurrected using the life crystals in ''[[The Dig]]'' is generally killed off again very quickly, from the alien wildlife (you can resurrect an alien turtle, but he'll just get eaten or explode seconds later...or if you screwed it up, he'll turn into slime) to major characters like {{spoiler|the Alien Inventor, who kills himself and seals himself inside a crystal after you're done talking to him, and Brink (as well as Maggie, if you choose to resurrect her), although Brink and Maggie's deaths are undone again at the end of the game}}.

* This is a major plot point of ''[[Tsukihime]]''. Dead Apostles, even though they're vampires, will eventually die sooner or later, so some of them have to get creative to extend their lifespans. Nrvnqsr Chaos does this by fusing with different beasts, Michael Roa Valdamjong does this through reincarnation, and Night of Wallachia does this by manifesting himself as a materialized fear or rumor.

* Zig-zagged in [[Professor Layton and the Unwound Future]], in which {{spoiler|Claire, was thought to be dead, is alive, albeit a few years later. But time travel is unstable, so she has to go back to the time she came from, and die.}}

* This is {{spoiler|the Underking}}'s goal in [[The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall]], which is why he seeks the Mantella, {{spoiler|his heart}}.