History Main / AllDeathsFinal

** The [[Anime/FullmetalAlchemist 2003 anime version]] further compounds this: Each time an alchemist performs human transmutation, what comes back evolves into a Homunculus - the deceased brought back by human transmutation, just... not totally themselves. Also, Alphonse managed to bring Edward, who had just been killed by Envy, back from the dead using himself as the philosopher's stone. Ed managed to bring Alphonse back using himself and ended up in our world instead of dead while Alphonse was brought back with his human body... It can be said that the whole 2003 anime is Ed and Al learned exactly what level of EquivalentExchange is required to return life to the dead - an exchange of body, mind and soul, a full human being for a full human being.

* ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'' generally follows this line of thought. When a character has been shown to really and truly die, they stay dead. When they don't, it was usually a [[NotQuiteDead blatant fake-out]] of some kind. It's later revealed that, while possible, resurrection is ''[[EquivalentExchange extremely]]'' [[EquivalentExchange costly]]. It requires the right ancient knowledge, is limited to the recently deceased, and possible only for [[DeusExMachina the one guy with the powerful ocular jutsu, the Rinnegan.]] Which means it's unlikely to happen often, and only occurs once in-series. Two other characters have the Rinnegan, but they're the BigBadDuumvirate, so they're unlikely to sacrifice themselves to revive fallen heroes. The only other jutsu that rivals it in this regard is the Edo Tensei, which sacrifices a living person to create a zombie of someone who has died previously, with their powers and memories fully intact. [[spoiler: Zabuza even has some meories from AFTER his death, but they are very vague.]]

*** Valkryie. She was actually revived by Thor, but got killed again by Loki right after her resurrection, so she got officially {{Ret Gone))d.

* ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'' generally follows this line of thought. When a character has been shown to really and truly die, they stay dead. When they don't, it was usually a [[NotQuiteDead blatant fake-out]] of some kind. It's later revealed that, while possible, resurrection is ''[[EquivalentExchange extremely]]'' [[EquivalentExchange costly]]. It requires the right ancient knowledge, is limited to the recently deceased, and possible only for [[DeusExMachina the one guy with the powerful ocular jutsu, the Rinnegan.]] Which means it's unlikely to happen often, and only occurs once in-series. Two other characters have the Rinnegan, but they're the BigBadDuumvirate, so they're unlikely to sacrifice themselves to revive fallen heroes. The only other jutsu that rivals it in this regard is the Edo Tensei, which sacrifices a living person to create a type zombie of someone who has died previously with their powers and memories intact.

** This is one of the rules of the Death Note. In the end of the manga, while Light is begging Ryuk to save him from death, Ryuk says that there is no way to do it. The last page (as a follow-up to a previous statement) says, "Once they are dead they can never come back to life." [[spoiler:This is because it's hard to come back once [[CessationOfExistence you stop existing.]]]]
** Subverted in the pilot manga chapter. Taro is absolutely distraught by the fact that he's killed people, and Ryuk offers him the [[ResetButton Death Eraser]]. It has the power to bring back any Death Note victims, but not people who died or were otherwise killed, but weren't Death Note victims, provided their names had been written down in the past year. Taro takes to it. The Death Eraser is not even so much as ''mentioned'' in the main series so, naturally, it shows up in many a FixFic as well.

** In the first two series, digimon could return to Primary Village upon their death to be reconfigured, but there was a time where this village was inactive, and so any digimon killed during this time was permanently dead.

** ''Anime/DigimonSavers'': Though Digimon effectively turn back into eggs immediately upon dying, they are reborn as new people without any knowledge of their former lives. The only exception seems to exist with partner digimon who have a strong connection with their humans. However, a straight example exists in the victims of Kurata's Gizmon, artificial digimon whose beams cause their victims to be permanently deleted when struck by them.
* While Miranda Lotto's Innocence power in ''Manga/DGrayMan'' allows her to turn back time (which doubles as a healing ability as she can turn back time on recent injuries,) she can't use it to bring back the dead. Not that the revived person would stay alive for long if she could, as everything returns to normal after she deactivates it (she can, however, keep a person alive after they suffer a fatal injury in the meantime.)

** Despite the highly advanced [[{{Magitek}} magic and technology]] of the setting, if a person is dead, they stay dead. You could try to make a clone of them and stuff their mind with memories, but all you'll get is [[ClonesArePeopleToo a lookalike that has their own personality]]. The closest thing to a resurrection in the franchise were the Dark Pieces in ''[[VideoGame/MagicalGirlLyricalNanohaAsPortable Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable: The Gears of Destiny]]'', which were {{Virtual Ghost}}s that could only stick around long enough to come to terms with their death and clean-up some UnfinishedBusiness.

* ''LightNovel/SwordArtOnline'' is about MMO gamers trapped in the game and player deaths are permanent. If the player's HP drops to 0, the hardware fries their brain. Later an item is found that can revive someone, but it only has a ten second window between character death and player death. In the later arcs, this aspect is no longer present in the VR games since the newer-generation hardware used to play the games doesn't allow for a kill-the-player-in-reality function. Some characters do die in reality while ''seeming'' to die in-game for other reasons.

* ''LightNovel/HowNotToSummonADemonLord'': Sakamoto Takuma plays a video game called ''Cross Reverie'', where resurrection spells are common. Then he gets summoned to a fantasy world that resembles the game as his character, Diablo. While this world resembles many aspects of the game, he discovers resurrection spells don't exist (or the inhabitants have never heard of them) and the dead stay dead.

* ''ComicBook/{{PS238}}'' followed this trope, until it brought a Mostly Dead character back to life. Canonically, the extremely rare ability to restore the dead marks someone as a "Messiah" class healer, which causes all kinds of ethical problems.
* Supposedly this was true for Franchise/TheDCU following the events of ''ComicBook/BlackestNight''. It didn't last.

*** Valkryie. She was actually revived by Thor, but got killed again by Loki right after her resurrection, so she got officially retgonned.

* Magic in ''Literature/InheritanceCycle'' works like this, draining a fatal amount of energy from whoever attempts it. It's brought up in ''Inheritance'' that you can physically resurrect a dead person, but there is no way to restore their mind, so everyone considers it better to leave them in the ground to avoid [[CameBackWrong certain issues]].
* ''Literature/TheBelgariad'' mentions this as a specific restriction of the Gods; they are not permitted to undo death (even though it's within their power) at the risk of setting off another universal catastrophe. Belgarion, however, is specifically permitted to accomplish this twice: once with a stillborn horse (who becomes important to the plot of ''[[Literature/TheBelgariad The Malloreon]]''), and at the very end with Durnik, fulfilling the prophecy that he would live twice. In the first case, he resurrected Horse in the place of the Gods, and in the second he needed the assistance of the Orb of Aldur and the Gods as well. Also in both cases, the deceased came back with special powers.

* In the ''Literature/{{Shannara}}'' franchise, characters can be healed from the brink of death. They can survive crippling wounds that would kill a normal person. There are loads of cases of NeverFoundTheBody. But if you actually die? That's all you get. You might come back as a Shade, but even then you're an immaterial ghost who can spend a maximum of a few minutes in the world of the living before returning to the land of the dead. Coming back really doesn't appear to be an option.
* In ''Franchise/TolkiensLegendarium'', this only applies to mortal creatures, in most cases Men, aka humans and Hobbits. Unlike most examples of the trope, this is actually seen as a good thing, well, to [[WhoWantsToLiveForever everyone who's not mortal]]. Specifically, Men are given the gift of death, the ability for their souls to depart from the circles of Arda to somewhere unknown, though the wise reassure us it's definitely to somewhere or something, and not oblivion. As for everyone else, they are sent to the Halls of Mandos where he judges them, and if found worthy can be reincarnated. The problem is that while Elves seem like they're getting the benefits while Men get the short end of the stick, they must stay in Arda until the world's end. Elves sometimes call Men the Guests for this reason, to be free of the burdens of a world in decline while Elves, Dwarves, and the Valar and Maia must remain where their fates are more uncertain. The exception is Luthien, who managed for the first and only time in existence to beg for her human love Beren not to depart without her. She was made mortal instead, and they died together. Their descendants, the Half-Elven have the choice to become mortal if they so choose. Tuer and Turin are also interesting cases, as Turin's soul is burdened with Morgoth's curse and the many sins in his life, he's doomed to stay in Arda until the end of time where he'll kill Morgoth for good, and Tuer, who sailed to the Undying Lands with his Elven wife Idril, the legends saying he was counted among them.
* In ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'', there doesn't even seem to be much in the way of healing magic. Any injury to a character is regarded as threatening as it would be in a non-magical genre, and anyone who dies stays that way, though their ghost might cause some trouble. Necromancy provides an alternative approach, [[CameBackWrong though not a very pretty one]]. It's also shown that the Queens of TheFairFolk can reconstruct damaged bodies, and some similarly powered beings can probably do so as well, but none have ever brought someone back to life. Harry was thought to be dead during the events of ''Literature/GhostStory'', but it turned out to be a DoubleSubversion, as while he was dead enough to visit the afterlife, he wasn't "{{Dead|erThanDead}}" dead. His body was being kept alive by multiple supernatural beings, waiting for him to return.

* ''Series/{{Lost}}'': Ben Linus sums the situation very well:

* This is the case in ''Webcomic/{{Drowtales}}''. Getting killed or possessed by a demon is both fatal - in the latter case the demon may retain some of the memories or personality of the body. Bodies can be reanimated, but as one character {{lampshade|Hanging}}s, it's just an empty shell with [[{{Magitek}} golem technology]]. Exceptions exist to some degree - one secondary character cheated death via magic, and a major plot character may be entirely resurrected.

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* ''Franchise/JoJosBizarreAdventure''
** Stands have incredible power in, but one hard rule is that they cannot raise the dead. They can [[GoodThingYouCanHeal cure wounds so grievous it's amazing there's anything left to cure]], and they can bring you back from the very brink of death. But once the soul departs, there is not and never will be a Stand that can undo this. The closest they can get is turning back time to undo the death in the first place, and even the extremely rare Stand with that power has massive limitations to what it can do.
** Oddly, that limitation doesn't seem to apply to the doctors at the Speedwagon Foundation, who manage to revive a very much dead Joseph (his soul departed and everything) using a blood transfusion. This is kind of a PlotHole and an egregious case of ArtisticLicenseBiology, but it may have something to do with his blood being taken out of a vampire.

* This is why [[spoiler:Esmeralda]] stays dead at the end of ''WebVideo/AnastasiaQuasimodoWeHitAWall''. Anastasia and Quasimodo's [[TheFairyGodmother Fairy Godmother]] can't bring dead people back. Magic doesn't work that way.

* ''Manga/FullmetalAlchemist''
** Human transmutation -- trying to bring back dead people through Alchemy -- is forbidden. The whole series is kicked off when the protagonists try to bring someone back and have a close encounter with Truth as a result. The end result: Truth [[EquivalentExchange takes Al, and Ed's leg, in payment]] for returning [[BodyHorror a barely functional organ pile]] (which, as it turns out, wasn't even derived from the deceased - bringing people back from the dead ''really is'' impossible). Things taken by Truth do not count as 'dead', however, and Ed is able to retrieve Al's soul by sacrificing his arm for it.

* ''Roleplay/DestroyTheGodmodder'' uses this to a certain extent. If an entity you summon gets killed, you cannot re-summon it.

* In ''{{Franchise/Pokemon}}'', there are admittedly few cases of this actually happening, but the fans and players came up with a challenge called the Nuzlocke Challenge. Basically, every Pokémon who faints, you must release it into the wild, even if it's your starter. The reason being because this Pokémon is "dead." That shiny Pokémon you're so attached to faints of poison? [[Franchise/StarTrek It's dead, Jim.]]

* ''Webcomic/ErrantStory'' touches on this in a particularly humorous fashion. It's used [[TearJerker more seriously]] later on.

Of course, the fact that it can't (or shouldn't) be done also makes it an [[ForbiddenFruit excellent]] MacGuffin: It's pretty common for an idealistic hero grieving over the death of a friend or loved one to search out ways to bring them back -- and usually give up after deciding that [[FantasticAesop some things are better left alone]]; if they don't, something usually [[CameBackWrong goes wrong]], like [[MonsterFromBeyondTheVeil something else came back instead]]. Alternatively, perhaps bringing someone BackFromTheDead is possible, but due to [[EquivalentExchange the nature of the power at work]] (whether or not it's actually forbidden) it almost never happens anyway. (Meaning that if there are multiple instances of people are resurrected in this kind of world, the mechanism for doing so will almost certainly become a/the focal point of the the story.) This is usually an AuthorsSavingThrow against trivializing death in a world where it would otherwise be a minor inconvenience.

Of course, the fact that it can't (or shouldn't) be done also makes it an [[ForbiddenFruit excellent]] MacGuffin: It's pretty common for an idealistic hero grieving over the death of a friend or loved one to search out ways to bring them back -- and usually give up after deciding that [[FantasticAesop some things are better left alone]]; if they don't, something usually [[CameBackWrong goes wrong]], like [[MonsterFromBeyondTheVeil something else came back instead]]. Alternatively, perhaps bringing someone BackFromTheDead is possible, but due to [[EquivalentExchange the nature of the power at work]] (whether or not it's actually forbidden) it almost never happens anyway. (Meaning that if people are still usually resurrected in this kind of world, it tends to be a very big deal.) This is usually an AuthorsSavingThrow against trivializing death in a world where it would otherwise be a minor inconvenience.

** This is one of the rules of the Death Note. In the end of the manga, while Light is begging Ryuk to save him from death, Ryuk says that there is no way to do it. The last page (as a follow-up to a previous statement) says, "Once they are dead they can never come back to life." [[spoiler:This is because it's hard to come back once [[CessationOfExistence you stop existing]].]]
** Subverted in the pilot manga chapter. Taro is absolutely distraught by the fact that he's killed people, and Ryuk offers him the [[ResetButton Death Eraser]]. It has the power to bring back any Death Note victims, but not people who died or otherwise killed but weren't Death Note victims, provided their names had been written down in the past year. Taro takes to it. The Death Eraser is not even so much as ''mentioned'' in the main series so, naturally, it shows up in many a FixFic as well.

** In the first two series, digimon could return to Primary Village upon their death to be reconfigured but there was a time where this village was inactive and so any digimon killed during this time was permanently dead.
** ''Anime/DigimonTamers'' differs from the previous two series in this respect. There is no village where data forms in eggs, loose data won't sometimes coalesce into ghosts, and absorbing another Digimon's data only makes you stronger (and, in some cases, gives you access to their attacks) and doesn't allow the previous mon to live on inside you. So when Digimon die, they die for good.

Of course, the fact that it can't (or shouldn't) be done also makes it an [[ForbiddenFruit excellent]] MacGuffin: It's pretty common for an idealistic hero grieving over the death of a friend or loved one to search out ways to bring them back -- and usually give up after deciding that [[FantasticAesop some things are better left alone]]; if they don't, something usually [[CameBackWrong goes wrong]], like [[MonsterFromBeyondTheVeil something else came back instead]]. Alternatively, perhaps bringing someone BackFromTheDead is possible, but due to [[EquivalentExchange the nature of the power at work]] (whether or not it's actually forbidden) it almost never happens anyway. (Meaning that if people are still usually resurrected in this kind of world, it tends to be a very big deal.) This is usually an AuthorsSavingThrow against trivializing Death in a world where it would otherwise be a minor inconvenience.

This doesn't mean that every character ''reported'' dead is, in fact, dead, even when NoOneCouldSurviveThat. Even in works that manifest this trope, it's possible that they NeverFoundTheBody, that ReportsOfMyDeathWereGreatlyExaggerated, that the AlmostDeadGuy who was LeftForDead pulled through off screen, or that someone was FakingTheDead outright. But [[FinallyFoundTheBody when a body]] ''[[FinallyFoundTheBody is]]'' [[FinallyFoundTheBody found]], the only way you're going to see that character again will be as a PosthumousCharacter.

** Note that AutoRevive phylacteries do exist, which is what saved Voldemort when Lily Potter rigged his execution method to completely backfire, but (A) It EATS a piece of the user's soul, (B) it revives them as a unique form of ghost that CAN be resurrected, but needs serious help or they'll be stuck that way, and (C) to make another, you need all the previously created phylacteries intact and at the ritual site, so if someone kills / dispels even a single phylactery, you're fucked AND you're down one whole part of your soul, forever (which is not good for your afterlife). Not exactly something a tyrant wants to do to themselves, but it didn't stop Voldemort from being suicidally dull.

* ''Franchise/JojosBizarreAdventure''

* In the ''Franchise/HarryPotter'' universe, only one method has ever been able to do anything even close to bring back the dead: [[spoiler:the resurrection stone, one of the three Deathly Hallows.]] Even then, it only brought back a sick facsimile of the person, and after its first use no one was eager to use it again. More conventional magic can regenerate bones from scratch, reshape bodies, or undo petrification, but cannot resurrect anyone.

* An enforced policy in ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'', to make death means something[[note]][[GamePlayAndStorySeggregation In spite of the fact that the game itself has plenty of resurrection spells]].[[/note]]. This is why characters like Yawgmoth and Urza aren't running around, and why each death in the modern era is all the more tragic. There is one possible exception in [[spoiler:Elspeth]], given the unique circumstances she is in, but even then Creative tells to hold no breath,

* Despite ''VideoGame/PillarsOfEternity'' being a high-magic setting, there is no spell that can resurrect the dead so any companions who die are dead for good (the setting does have magic that binds the soul to the body in such a way that the person doesn't exactly die, but this has major [[HorrorHunger drawbacks]], and ultimately leads to being a mindless soul endlessly bound to a pile of bonedust, so it isn't exactly something you'd ''want'' to have done to you if you know the price). However, {{reincarnation}} happens naturally to everyone.