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* The character is [[Pinocchio Syndrome|miraculously restored to full life.]]
 
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 Byby Sunlight]].
 
This is an '''{{smallcaps|(Un)[[Death Trope]]}}''', so spoilers follow.
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== Anime ==
* ''[[XXX HolicXxxHolic]]'' and ''[[Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle]]'' example- {{spoiler|Yuko Ichihara.}} A full explanation would require an eight paragraph course in semi-made-up-by-CLAMP-mysticism, [[Mind Screw|confusingness]], [[Gambit Pileup|multiple overly-complex-plan pileups]], and would leave you more confused than educated.
* Goes with the territory of the ''[[Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service]]'' -- the main character's power allows him to temporarily coax the recently dead to talk (and move) again in order to finish business they left on earth, but this effect's length can usually be measured in minutes before they're done and pass on again. {{spoiler|Other characters who can revive the dead also exist, but their powers are equally temporary -- though in one girl's case it's because her powers cause the dead enormous pain and they become unreasoning monsters who must be put down.}}
* [[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...
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== Film ==
* 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 (Animation)|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.
* ''[[Frankenhooker]]'' -- a guy accidentally kills his girlfriend, and rebuilds her from parts of hookers he's killed. At the end of the movie, {{spoiler|he is killed, and brought back to life by his girlfriend only with leftover hooker parts too}}.
* 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.
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* ''[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104511/ Innocent Blood]'': {{spoiler|The original vampire tries to kill herself at the end, but is stopped.}}
* ''[[Near Dark]]'' ends with {{spoiler|the rest of the vampires dead and the main character and his love interest cured of vampirism through a complete blood replacement}}.
* Averted in ''[[The DevilsDevil's Backbone (Film)|The Devils Backbone]]'' - although Santi accomplishes his [[Ghostly Goals]], {{spoiler|Dr. Casares becomes a ghost at the end, and}} stays that way.
* Averted in ''[[Beetlejuice (Film)|Beetlejuice]]'', where everyone stays a ghost.
 
 
== Literature ==
* In ''[[Frankenstein (Literaturenovel)|Frankenstein]]'', it is implied that the creature committed suicide by burning to death.
* In Bram Stoker's ''[[Dracula (Literaturenovel)|Dracula]]'', the [[Character Title|title]] [[Dracula|character]], his three vampire "brides" (who were probably turned years beforehand) and [[Purity Sue|Lucy Westenra]] (changed into a vampire) are all killed.
* Also averted with ''[[Discworld]]'' zombies, most of whom have jobs like policemen and lawyers.
* Averted in the early ''[[Harry Potter]]'' books {{spoiler|but then played straight with all but the house ghosts}}.
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* The plot of [[Stephen King]]'s ''[[Pet Sematary]]'' circles around the concept that the dead should stay dead.
** And in fact they do. The corpses that revive after burial in the Pet Sematary are different creatures than the ones who died, the original owners are gone. The problem of the Pet Sematary is rooted in the desire to deny the reality of death, it's the 'come on' that enables the demonic power to get at them.
* ''[[Xanth (Literature)|Xanth]]'' has the Zombie King. His power is to create zombies. They nearly always remain zombies, unless it's changed since I stopped reading the "Trilogy" after book 27. Oddly, the Zombie King is not himself a zombie; he was for a while, but he recovered.
** They do. The Zombie King is an unique case, all other zombies stay the same. But they are rarely more that scenery.
* Death Knight Lord Soth from the ''[[Dragonlance]]'' books was [[Humanity Ensues|turned Human]] and subsequently killed in the War of Souls trilogy.
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* Averted like all get out in ''[[Dragaera]]''. Sethra Lavode is a vampire and intends to stay that way. Since she's [[Person of Mass Destruction|so powerful that even the gods stay out of her way]], she's likely to remain so.
** She did once tell Vlad that under certain (very unlikely) circumstances she'd consider her existence fulfilled and {{spoiler|"become part of the rock of Dzur Mountain again"}}.
* {{spoiler|Laura Moon}} in ''[[American Gods (Literature)|American Gods]]'' chooses death over undeath(or possibly full restoration) in the end.
* In the end of ''[[Warm Bodies]]'', some of the zombies (presumably the ones still intact enough to function) start to come back alive.
* Mixed bag in the [[Betsy the Vampire Queen]] series: the vampires (mostly) survive, the zombie gets killed, and most of the ghosts go off to Heaven (or wherever), except for one who chooses to stick around.
* 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.
* [[Coldfire Trilogy|Gerald Tarrant,]] aka The Hunter, got ''nine hundred years'' of undeath thanks to a [[Deal Withwith the Devil|bargain with The Unnamed.]] But by the end of the third book, he [[Heroic Sacrifice|sacrifices his life]] to defeat Calesta, and then the Mother of the Iezu restores him to human life for complicated reasons. And then he has a heart attack, but Damien heals him. And ''then'' his [[Identical Grandson|great-great-great-grandson]] goes after him for [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge|murdering his family,]] cuts off his head and throws it on a bonfire. {{spoiler|[[Faking the Dead|It was a trick,]] and he walks away in the end.}}
 
 
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*** 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.}}
* ''[[Dead Like Me]]'' plays it straight, surprisingly. While the reapers are indeed undead and stay that way for decades, they do eventually get to go to [[Heaven]]-- or a reasonable generic facsimile thereof. So do all the one-episode ghosts throughout the series.
* ''[[Torchwood (TV)|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.
** ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' implicitly averted this, given that vampires appear to be very hard for anyone but a Slayer to kill, and there generally being only a single Slayer at a time {{spoiler|until first there is Kendra, and then Faith, and at the very end a few hundred of them}}. Soulless vampires are not depicted as suffering from the sort of remorse or ennui that would lead one of them to embrace being even deader, and they generally don't want to become living or believe they can.
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== Tabletop RPG ==
* ''[[The World of Darkness (Tabletop Game)|The World of Darkness]]'' does this on a case-by-case basis.
** Generally, players of ''[[Vampire: The Masquerade (Tabletop Game)|Vampire: The Masquerade]]'' or ''[[Vampire: The Requiem (Tabletop Game)|Vampire: The Requiem]]'' are going to want to keep their characters alive as long as possible, individually averting it. In the background material, few vampires are over a thousand or so years old (most of the canon characters are under 300), though this is less from ennui (the cure for that is the deathlike sleep called torpor) than from the backstabbing, predatory nature of Kindred existence.
** In ''[[Promethean: The Created (Tabletop Game)|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 Withwith 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: theThe Resurrection (Tabletop Game)|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 (Tabletop Game)|Wraith: The Oblivion]]'' have three options: Oblivion, and utter destruction; [[Ascend to Aa Higher Plane of Existence|Transcendence]], and an ambiguous fate; or remain in the Underworld. Some older wraiths have been around for thousands of years.
* As a rule, undead in standard ''[[Dungeons and Dragons (Tabletop Game)|Dungeons and Dragons]]'' are evil because they're animated by "negative energy." Even the completely mindless ones. Therefore, lesser undead tend to fall by the dozen before player characters, and greater (intelligent) undead are also in the queue to be eliminated eventually, usually as bosses of some stripe or another. Individual settings shake things up a bit more, with prominent lich and vampire NPCs in some, and whole nations that revere or employ undead in others.
** ''[[Eberron (Tabletop Game)|Eberron]]'' being particularly notable, where one nation, Karrnath, employs intelligent undead in its armies and whose king is secretly a vampire -- and is in fact the most peaceful, caring monarch around (just don't threaten him, his people, or the peace). The elven nation of Aerenal animate "deathless," undead fueled by positive energy, as a living afterlife for their greatest citizens. There's also a semi-popular religion that reveres undeath as the path to immortality.
** 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.
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== Video Games ==
* D in [[Trace Memory]] moves on to the next life if you get the good ending. And in the second game, you lay to rest {{spoiler|Kelly, Matt's [[Dead Little Sister]].}}
* All of the Unsent in ''[[Final Fantasy X (Video Game)|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.}}
* This trope is both played straight and averted in ''[[World of Warcraft]]''.
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*** In ''Cataclysm'', {{spoiler|Sylvanas}} decides to openly [[Defied Trope|defy]] this trope after getting killed in an ambush and experiencing [[The Nothing After Death]] that {{spoiler|Arthas}} mentioned. Once resurrected by her Val'kyr, she proclaims that she can't let herself or {{spoiler|The Forsaken}} die off.
* After being resurrected in the ''[[Shadowrun]]'' [[First-Person Shooter]], you will [[Made of Explodium|explode]] if you die again, either from losing all your [[Hit Points]] (again) or from bleeding out after the teammate who resurrected you dies.
* [[Gungrave|Beyond the Grave]] is an undead protagonist, has been undead for almost twenty years (though most of that time was spent [[Sealed Badass in Aa Can|sleeping]]), and stays undead throughout both games. The animation ends quite differently: {{spoiler|he and Harry perform mutually-assisted suicide after realizing the flaws that led to their downfall}}.
* 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.
* ''[[Tales of Monkey Island (Video Game)|Tales of Monkey Island]]'': {{spoiler|With the help of [[The Power of Love]] (and the Crossroads Exit spell), Guybrush comes [[Back From the Dead]], and from his undead state, at the end of Chapter 5.}}
* Zig-zagged in [[Professor Layton and Thethe 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}}.
 
 
== Webcomics ==
* ''[[Drow TalesDrowtales]]'': "The dead should stay dead" is the Kyorl clan's attitude; we shall see if they were right....
* In ''[[Erfworld]]'', "uncroaked" units last for only a limited time before they decay. I don't know offhand whether that's a mechanic from any of the games that provide the general concept, but I wouldn't be surprised.
** Many strategy games give newly created undead a limited "lifespan" as a game balance thing - otherwise the side who can turn all casualties undead would get an unfair advantage in the long run.
** This is later averted by {{spoiler|Prince Ansom and other "Decrypted" created by the arkenpliers}}.
*** Which, of course, proved it [[Justified Trope|justified]] in the first place, as in Book 2, {{spoiler|Wanda and her decrypted army are marching across the world nearly unopposed.}}
* Averted so far in ''[[Sluggy Freelance (Webcomic)|Sluggy Freelance]]''. Supporting character Sam became a vampire back in 1998, and he's still a vampire, and still a supporting character. It helps that his attitude is pretty non-confrontational and he's the last surviving member of a vampire clan with a ''really'' obscure [[Kryptonite Factor]].
* In ''[[Scary Go Round]]'', Shelley was murdered and brought back as a zombie, but became a normal living human again after being [[Lightning Can Do Anything|struck by lightning]].
* Averted in ''Indefensible Positions'', where Dead Debbie, an [[Captain Obvious|undead]] protagonist, stays undead.
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== Western Animation ==
* The ghost of Cassidy from the second season of [[WITCH (Animationanimation)|WITCH]] is eventually brought back to life and reunited with her mother. It's never explained how this happened or how everyone reacted to someone who'd been dead for several decades suddenly showing up again.
 
{{reflist}}
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