History Main / LongDeadBadass

If the character is dead and brought back to life at some point, that's BackFromTheDead, which invalidates this trope if said person remains alive for some time, but it's only fairly briefly it still applies. If this character is ''believed'' by most everyone to be dead but turns out to not be, that's NotQuiteDead. If this character dies, goes to the afterlife and fights their way out, that's EscapedFromHell. If this character is defeated, but not killed and instead sealed away, that's SealedBadassInACan. If they are prophecised to return someday, that's KingInTheMountain. If this character dies during the actual story, no matter how early, then it is Administrivia/SquarePegRoundTrope. If the character is brought back as an undead to [[TheCavalry assist the heroes]], that's CavalryOfTheDead. This character is sometimes the motivation for a RoaringRampageOfRevenge, sometimes the character is someone the main characters aspire to be, maybe being that MC's CantCatchUp. Unlike FamedInStory, this character doesn't actually HAVE to be famous, just important enough to the to one or more of the main characters to be mentioned sometimes. Frequently the inverse of LivingLegend. A type of PosthumousCharacter.

** In ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]'', the three First Tongues trained on how to use the [[MakeMeWannaShout Thu'um]] by the [[HeelFaceTurn repentant]] dragon [[AscendedDemon Paarthurnax]], by the time the game rolls around. Gormlaith, Felldir, and Hakon are referred to by Paarthurnax as "wuth fadonne", or "old friends"; for an ageless dragon like Paarthurnax to refer to them like that shows how much they meant to him.

** When he was first mentioned, it was established that nobody outside of veteran pirates and senior members of the Marines even remembered his name, but Rocks D. Xebec rightly earned his infamous reputation. He ruled the seas in the time before the rise of Gold Roger, the King of the Pirates and his crew included powerhouses like Whitebeard, Kaidou, and Big Mom, long before they gained their reputations as members of the Four Emperors. He delved into taboo subjects that made him a target of the World Government almost in the same vein as the Revolutionary Dragon and when he did finally meet his end, it was only possible through the [[TeethClenchTeamwork combined efforts]] of both Garp and Roger; his defeat is what earned Garp his reputation as the "Hero of the Marines", in fact.

** When he was first mentioned, it was established that nobody outside of veteran pirates and senior members of the Marines even remembered his name, but Rocks D. Xebec rightly earned his infamous reputation. He ruled the seas in the time before the rise of Gold Roger, the King of the Pirates and his crew included powerhouses like Whitebeard, Kaidou, and Big Mom, long before they gained their reputations as members of the Four Emperors. He delved into taboo subjects that made him a target of the World Government almost in the same vein as the Revolutionary Dragon and when he did finally meet his end, it was only possible through the combined efforts of Monkey D. Garp, the "Hero of the Marines" and Gold Roger himself.

** The greatest of them is undoubtedly the King of the Pirates himself, "Gold" Gol D. Roger, 20+ years dead by the story's start. Only the WorldsStrongestMan, Whitebeard, was said to ever fight on equal terms with him. One of the big secrets surrounding Roger's capture and execution is [[spoiler:the fact that he was never actually captured, Roger ''surrendered'' and used his death to spark the Great Pirate Era]].
** Wano Country no doubt has many in its long history of powerful and renowned samurai, but the one most in modern Wano remember is Kozuki Oden. Not only did he defeat a mountain beast by himself, he was a member of the crews of both Whitebeard and Roger in their prime and only got that way after clashing with them respectively and ''surviving''. But perhaps his greatest feat, he fought against Kaidou, presently called the '''Strongest Creature Among All Living Things''' and infamous for being able to NoSell pretty much anything thrown at him. Oden not only ''wounded'' Kaidou using his impressive Haki and twin katanas forged by Wano's greatest swordsmiths, but in doing so left Kaidou with his first permanent scar in his lifetime. Kaidou himself still remembers the mark, both physically and mentally, that Oden left on him; so great was it that when he witnessed Roronoa Zoro wielding one of the samurai's blades to attack, he saw a manifestation of Oden appear in Zoro's place and actually ''dodged'' the attack out of instinctive fear. Though he ultimately fell to Kurozumi Orochi's trickery and was forced to endure the "Legendary Hour" of standing in boiling oil holding his allies above his head, Oden still went out of the living world as a champion, managing to inspire the witnessing crowd to recite his signature CharacterCatchphrase even as Kaido [[BoomHeadshot delivered the fatal shot]].

* ''Manga/BakiTheGrappler'': By the start of the series, he's been long dead (implied to be of old age), but Yuuichiro Hanma, father of Yujiro and grandfather of Baki, was just as, if not more of a monster of immeasurable strength than even his son, the world-(in)famous "Strongest Creature on Earth". He fought in and survived the Pacific Campaign, skirmishing with the USS ''Iowa'' battleship by using a technique to hurl enemy soldiers like missiles. The Okinawan island he was on was regularly fire-bombed and shelled, ''and it wasn't enough to kill him.'' The commanding officer even explicitly intended to try ''dropping a nuke'' on him, and was only stopped because the larger war had ended already, though that didn't stop him from continuing with the rest, only to end up a mangled corpse ''embedded in the hull of his ship''. Cementing his status within this trope, Yuichiro even manages to return to the 21st century as a specter to oversee the climactic battle between son and grandson, where his presence alone manages to cause the inhumanly strong caveman Pickle to ''violently shake with fear'', even though the series up until that point contained very few supernatural or even semi-supernatural elements.

* ''Manga/OnePiece'' has the King of the Pirates Gold Roger, over twenty years dead. Only the WorldsStrongestMan, Whitebeard, was said to ever fight on equal terms with him. One of the big secrets surrounding Roger's capture and execution is [[spoiler:the fact that he was never actually captured, Roger ''surrendered'' and used his death to spark the Great Pirate Era]].