History Main / NecRomantic

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

* Featured heavily in ''Manga/FullmetalAlchemist.'' Attempting to bring back a dead person with alchemy is not only strictly forbidden but is almost guaranteed to [[GoneHorriblyWrong go horribly awry]], scar your body, kill an innocent, create a monster, etc. People (including the protagonists) try it anyway. Different than the villainous examples as all the people who try this are painted in a sympathetic light.
* While attempting human transmutation causes you to [[spoiler:''merely'' lose a body part (and find out later that bringing back the dead is flat-out ''impossible'')]], ''Anime/FullmetalAlchemist2003'' things are somewhat different compared to the source:
** [[spoiler:Human transmutation causes you to lose part of your body, ''and'' the corpse becomes a nigh-immortal monster]].
** The anime also hints that [[spoiler:the homunculus ''is'' the person who was supposed to be brought back]]. By the end, Lust is thoroughly convinced of this while Sloth is scared to death of the possibility; [[spoiler:it's why she wants to kill the Elrics so much: no mother would do such a thing, thus differentiating herself from Trisha]].
* After Yuki's [[spoiler:parents]] die in ''Manga/FutureDiary'', he decides to win the power of God in the survival game and bring them back to life.
** It should be noted that, unlike most examples, [[spoiler: he is told this is perfectly possible, and what's more is that he also intends to bring ''everyone'' back to life, not just his parents. Well, everyone who died in the Survival Game at least.]]
*** Oh, and [[spoiler: it turns out Murmur and Yuno were lying, it isn't possible to bring someone back to life, only their body. Though if you are dead set on it, you can always go back in time and try to save them.]]

* Subverted in ''Franchise/OnePiece'' with Doctor Hogback. After going through something of a motive rant that looks like he's using this as an excuse for his start of darkness, he reveals he doesn't actually ''care'' about Cindry's personality and just liked her pretty face anyway. He prefers her in her new zombie form, completely subservient to his every command.

* Faust VIII, a [[HeelFaceTurn former villain]] from ''Manga/ShamanKing'', was a perfectly ordinary, handsome, cheerful young doctor before the death of his wife in a botched robbery. Now his ultimate goal is to use his necromancy to achieve his goal of reviving his wife's spirit, using corpses (including his wife's and their dog's) as weapons.
** Although, for a sort of subversion, his goal is not seen as horribly evil as it usually would and it really isn't. It is just his mind and personality that got really crushed with her death i.e. he's a bit snooker-loopy and amoral at times, but that has nothing to do with his necromantic powers. The act of resurrecting someone is even called "True Necromancy". The only problem is that on his own, he's not capable of resurrecting her. He eventually [[spoiler: quits and decides to die for good to join up with her.]] At least [[PragmaticAdaptation in the Manga.]]
** In the anime, [[spoiler:he did get her back. But Anna resurrected her, not him.]]

* Pegasus' motivation in ''Anime/YuGiOh'' was to resurrect his dead fiancée/wife through a combination of ancient magic and the "Solid Vision" holographic technology.
* ''Anime/YuGiOhGX'': Professor Cobra made a [[DealWithTheDevil deal]] with the SealedEvilInACan to resurrect his dead son.

* Cicada from ''Franchise/TheFlash'' was killing people the titular hero had saved to gather enough energy to bring his wife (whom he had murdered, only to feel remorse) back from death.
* Mr. Freeze's attempts to bring his wife back from the dead succeeded when he put her in a Lazarus Pit... until she CameBackWrong with eternal pain, insanity, and fire-manipulation powers. Now, she is Lazera, constantly hating Freeze for bringing her back.
* ComicBook/ThePhantomStranger foe Professor Nathan Seine was a scientist who studied magic in an attempt to cure his wife's fatal illness. When his wife is killed by his own magic during a battle with the Stranger, Seine becomes obsessed with getting revenge on the stranger, and find a way to return his wife to life.

* Shows up in a season 2 episode of ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' by way of an ancient Greek resurrection spell.
** Sam and Dean can also fall into this at times when it comes to each other.

* This is the reason why the Dark Presence takes on Barbara Jagger's form in ''VideoGame/AlanWake'', coupled with a case of CameBackWrong. Partially subverted as Thomas Zane wasn't evil.

* Fairly early in ''VideoGame/BulletWitch'', you discover that the events leading up to the game -- disastrous plague, demonic invasion, etc. -- were caused by such a character attempting to revive their loved one. A bit farther in, you discover that it was his daughter, not a lover. Towards the end... [[spoiler: You find out that it was Alicia's father, resurrecting her after a plane crash -- she seems to be WalkingTechbane for aircraft. She came back to life as a super-powered witch with a mysterious demonic ExpositionFairy... and he's spent the entire time since alive but in agony from being impaled, as the physical embodiment of the contract opening the demonic portal. She's been spending the time since fighting the demons to make up for her resurrection bringing them about in the first place... and has to kill him to finally close the portal and allow any chance of ending the demonic invasion once and for all.]]
* ''VisualNovel/Case03TrueCannibalBoy'': Marty [[spoiler: uses the goddess extract from ''VideoGame/Case02ParanormalEvil'' to bring back Sally as a zombified head after the Cannibal Boy ate her body. He then becomes a SerialKiller trying to find a replacement body for Sally]].

* ''VideoGame/FireEmblemTheSacredStones'' has two, [[spoiler:Lyon and Orson]]. [[spoiler:Lyon]] becomes possessed by [[SealedEvilInACan Fomortiis]] when he attempts to use Grado's Sacred Stone to revive his late father Vigarde, who is revived as a soulless zombie. He promises [[spoiler:Orson]] that he'll revive his wife if he does a FaceHeelTurn. By the time he gets his "wife" back, he's too crazy to [[MummiesAtTheDinnerTable notice she's just a reanimated corpse.]]
* Shows up again in the Ashen Wolves sidestory in ''VideoGame/FireEmblemThreeHouses'': [[spoiler:A monk that previously worked at the Church of Seiros hatches a plan that spans the whole story: he sends off Byleth and their students to [[MacguffinDeliveryService risk their lives and get him an ancient artifact]]. He then initiates a [[BloodMagic blood sacrifice ritual]] in order to feed the artifact and revive, of all people, Byleth's mother, as he loves her so dearly. The ritual fails and the artifact eats him alive.]]

* In the ''Lego Battles'' game for Nintendo DS, one of the story modes involves playing as an Evil Wizard in control of an army of [[DemBones skeletal mooks]]... who turns out to be just after the pieces to a magic staff that can resurrect his dead girlfriend. In a partial subversion, he actually manages it at the end, although she CameBackWrong repeatedly, including coming back as a crab, a robot and an angry pirate.

* This is the protagonist's motivation for slaying the Colossi in ''VideoGame/ShadowOfTheColossus''. In the process, he [[spoiler:nearly unleashes a surprisingly honest ancient evil being on the world in a DealWithTheDevil (said "Devil" more or less keeps Their word, and even warned the protagonist of the consequences several times), and is turned into an infant.]]
** ''Shadow of the Colossus'' is pretty gray, really. Dormin (the aforementioned [[spoiler:ancient evil]]) is really more bitter than actually evil, whereas [[spoiler:the knights who reseal Them at the end are implied to have caused this whole mess in the first place by killing the woman the protagonist spends the game trying to resurrect]].
* This happens in one of the endings to ''VideoGame/SilentHill2'' to [[spoiler:James, who, throughout, the game gathers several artifacts as part of a ritual to return his wife, Mary, back to life.]]

* [[spoiler:Mithos Yggdrasil]] from ''VideoGame/TalesOfSymphonia'' spent '''four thousand years''' trying to revive [[spoiler:his dead sister Martel. He succeeded. Only to have her reject his actions for the past four millennia and be sent back to the dead five minutes later. He didn't take that well.]]

* Played with in ''VideoGame/{{Touhou}} 7''. The goal of [[CuteGhostGirl Yuyuko]] [[{{Necromancer}} Saigyouji]] is to resurrect the one sealed under Saigyou Ayakashi, believing that it's someone dear to her. [[spoiler:[[IdentityAmnesia It's actually her very own self, and she briefly resurrected]]]]. However, the one who enabled Yuyuko to pull her [[SpringIsLate crazy scheme]] was Yukari, to bring back Yuyuko's memory of her. Neither Yuyuko nor Yukari got away unscathed.
* Lezard Valeth of ''VideoGame/ValkyrieProfile'' is one of the more demented villains out there even before he discovers that Valkyries are only active when the humans serving as their SoulJar are killed. So he kills a few dozen female humans and elves to make homunculi for Lenneth Valkyrie to be incarnated into (it's never made clear how many, but at least a dozen homunculi are shown, and it's suggested it takes a few of both species to make just one), all so he can woo her. [[KarmaHoudini By the end of the game, he gets away with it, too.]]

[[folder:Visual Novels]]
* Josef Capek's loved one in ''VisualNovel/ShikkokuNoSharnoth'' died during a seance and he's trying to bring her back to life with magic.
* In ''VisualNovel/UminekoWhenTheyCry'', at first it appears that the entire plot [[MindScrew apparently]] revolves around Kinzo Ushiromiya trying to revive his dead mistress... who also happens to be a 1000-year-old SealedEvilInACan. [[spoiler:But then it's revealed that Kinzo has been dead for almost two years before the story begins, meaning he wasn't involved in any of the murders. And although he did have a dead mistress whom he loved dearly, she was not 1000 years old nor was she SealedEvilInACan.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Webcomics]]

* In ''Webcomic/QuentynQuinnSpaceRanger'' this turned out to be the cause of the attempted killer's motivation in the "Murder on the Sapphire Star" arc. [[spoiler: Sebak was trying to replicate his dead wife Anippe from 50-year-old medical scans and then overwrite the clone's brain with a 30-year-old brainscan taken just before her death. Unfortunately, Anippe's digital copy freed her biological copy and she attacked him.]]

* ''VideoGame/ChaosRingsIII'' features a particularly twisted subversion. SerialKiller Drei 6 wants to bring a woman back to life and has been abducting and harvesting people to create a Gene capable of resurrecting her. During the HopelessBossFight after TheReveal, he confesses that the only reason he's doing this is that [[spoiler:he ''really'' enjoyed killing her. He wants to be able to resurrect her so he can kill her over and over again.]] To twist the knife further, said woman was [[spoiler:party member Al's wife.]] Double-subverted at the very end, when [[spoiler:his sister the mod engineer]] claims that Drei is compelled to kill that which he loves, meaning he may have really loved the woman he wants to revive in his own warped way.

* In ''Film/TheAbominableDrPhibes'', the title character is trying to avenge his wife's (Creator/Caroline Munro in an early, non-speaking role) death. In ''Dr. Phibes Rises Again'', he's done that and is now trying to bring her back using Ancient Egyptian magic (with the added bonus of getting eternal life for the pair of them). At the end of the film, he [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech explains to his nemesis]] why [[NotSoDifferentRemark they're not only similar]], but Phibes actually holds the moral high ground.

* In ''Film/TheAbominableDrPhibes'', the title character is trying to avenge his wife's death. In ''Dr. Phibes Rises Again'', he's done that and is now trying to bring her back using Ancient Egyptian magic (with the added bonus of getting eternal life for the pair of them). At the end of the film, he [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech explains to his nemesis]] why [[NotSoDifferentRemark they're not only similar]], but Phibes actually holds the moral high ground.

* In Myth/EgyptianMythology Isis tries unsuccessfully to bring her husband Osiris back to life but fails to because his brother Set ripped his dead body apart and a fish eats the penis. Isis is by no means a villain though.
** Isis then conceived Horus with her dead husband (yes, after he was dead, and without his original penis), who avenges his murdered father.
* In the Armenian folktale of Ara the Handsome, Ara is the king of Armenia and the most handsome man in the land. The Queen of Assyria, Semiramis, hears about how handsome he is and asks him to marry her, but he refuses because he already has a wife. Angry, Semiramis declares war on Armenia and orders her soldiers to bring Ara back alive. However, Ara dies in battle. Semiramis attempts to resurrect him by calling upon wolf spirits to lick his wounds and heal him, but the sorcery is unsuccessful.

* Sinner, an antagonist from the first ''LightNovel/ScrappedPrincess'' [[LightNovels light novel]], carried around the long-past-decayed corpse of his daughter Lynthia in hopes that he would be able to bring her back to life after she succumbed to a curse. Unfortunately, he's also AxCrazy and refuses to believe that she's even dead (until Shannon beats seven shades of hell out of him).

* A story arc in ''[[LightNovel/{{Slayers}} Slayers NEXT]]'' features a wizard making a pact with mazoku in order to resurrect his lover. He succeeds, but she awakens in a zombie-like state [[MercyKill begging to be sent back]]. Needless to say, things do not end well.

** Th eanime also hints that [[spoiler:the homunculus ''is'' the person who was supposed to be brought back]]. By the end, Lust is thoroughly convinced of this while Sloth is scared to death of the possibility; [[spoiler:it's why she wants to kill the Elrics so much: no mother would do such a thing, thus differentiating herself from Trisha]].

* ''VideoGame/FireEmblemTheSacredStones'' has two, [[spoiler:Lyon and Orson]]. [[spoiler:Lyon]] becomes possessed by [SealedEvilInACan Fomortiis]] when he attempts to use Grado's Sacred Stone to revive his late father Vigarde, who is revived as a soulless zombie. He promises [[spoiler:Orson]] that he'll revive his wife if he does a FaceHeelTurn. By the time he gets his "wife" back, he's too crazy to [[MummiesAtTheDinnerTable notice she's just a reanimated corpse.]]

* ''VideoGame/FireEmblemTheSacredStones'' has two, [[spoiler:Lyon and Orson]]. [[spoiler:Lyon]] becomes possessed by SealedEvilInACan when he attempts to use said can to revive his late father, who is revived as a soulless zombie. He promises [[spoiler:Orson]] that he'll revive his wife if he does a FaceHeelTurn. By the time he gets his "wife" back, he's too crazy to [[MummiesAtTheDinnerTable notice she's just a reanimated corpse.]]