History Main / NotTooDeadToSavetHeDay

'''As a {{Death Trope|s}},, all spoilers may be unmarked ahead. Beware.'''

** In ''XV'', when the Symphogear users are about to be finished off by the Daedalus Attack, Hibiki has a vision of Saint-Germain who tells her not to give up. This causes the Symphogear users to unlock their Amalgam Forms and break out of the labyrinth, complete with the spirit of Saint-Germain accompanying Hibiki during her HeroicSecondWind.

* The finale of ''Anime/SenkiZesshouSymphogear AXZ'' has the alchemists pull this off ''twice'' in quick succession. Firstly, when the US president launches a nuke at Japan not realizing that Hibiki had been freed from her berserk state, Cagliostro and Prelati reveal that they had been FakingTheDead only for them and Saint-Germain to perform a HeroicSacrifice to safely stop the nuke. Then during the FinalBattle with Adam, their spirits appear to help Hibiki transform again after she was forced to demorph to avoid being crushed by Adam, which causes Hibiki to enter her GoldenSuperMode and finish off Adam for good.

'''As a DeathTrope, all spoilers may be unmarked ahead. Beware.'''

* In ''Literature/SwordArtOnline'', when Kirito is incapacitated in his encounter with Sugou Nobuyuki/Oberon and it appears as if the latter won due to abusing admin commands (the whole thing takes place inside of a Virtual Reality MMORPG), the ghost[[note]]Not a real ghost, but rather a copy of his mind which was scanned and subsequently digitized moments before his death[[/note]] of Kayaba Akihiko appears and gives Kirito the means to fight back in form of encouragement and his own password to the system - the first to make him want to fight, and the latter to give him means of stopping Oberon's abuse of admin commands.

* ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfNarnia'': In ''Literature/TheLionTheWitchAndTheWardrobe'', Peter and friends are fighting a losing battle against the White Witch and her minions, when the [[BackFromTheDead resurrected]] Aslan shows up and saves the day.
%%* Happens with Belit in the Literature/ConanTheBarbarian books. (Valeria in the film.)

* ''Franchise/DragonAge'': In ''Literature/TheCalling'', the team is trapped in a LotusEaterMachine by a demon of the Fade (a spiritual dimension). King Maric finds himself in a dream where his love Katriel (whom he personally killed in ''Literature/TheStolenThrone'' for betraying him) is still alive and is his queen. In fact, his wife, Queen Rowan, is also alive and married to Loghain (her real love). However, despite his desire to stay in this dream, Maric knows that his companions need him. After he leaves his dream, Katriel re-appears to help him rescue his friends, except he's not sure if this really is Katriel's spirit or merely his own memory of her manifesting in the Fade.
* In ''The Suicide King'', the third book in the ''Literature/{{Fallocaust}}'' series, [[spoiler:Reaver, Killian, and Jade are all believed dead, or at least incapacitated, by the vast majority of characters. They return to Skyfall to save the day - and humanity - from Gage and the proxy worms.]]

* Brian Lumley's ''Literature/{{Necroscope}}'' series takes the trope literally; the dead owe Harry Keogh an enormous debt, to the point that any corpse physically able to do so will lift itself out of the earth, or off the ground, and fight for his cause when required.
* ''Literature/OldKingdom'' series:
** A post-climatic example occurs in ''Literature/{{Sabriel}}'': After having been mortally wounded by Kerrigor, Sabriel willingly lets herself float down the river of death — but the spirits of Abhorsens past send her back to Life, urging her to carry on.
** A very similar thing happens at the end of ''Literature/{{Abhorsen}}'' as well: the Disreputable Dog meets Nicholas at the First Gate, and after a little conversation, she sends him back into Life, for Lirael's sake.
* In ''[[Creator/MatthewReilly Scarecrow]]'', Mother blocks a guillotine blade with a shuriken when it was about to decapitate Scarecrow. He was still locked in the stocks, but her arrival was enough of a distraction to get him out. This is actually sort of Mother's shtick - in every book, occasionally more than once, she'll be caught in a NoOneCouldSurviveThat situation. She catches up with the story just in time to enact this trope.
* In Creator/StephenKing's ''Literature/TheStand'', Nick Andros tells Tom Cullen what he needs to do to save Stuart Redman's life during the winter in the mountains. Tom doesn't know that Nick is dead.
* ''Franchise/StarWarsLegends'': A less mystical version from ''Literature/{{Shatterpoint}}'': at the very end of the climactic battle, Mace is unarmed, critically wounded, and unable to stop his apprentice from [[DrivenToSuicide killing herself out of remorse]]. However, it turns out that his lieutenant, [[TheGunslinger Nick Rostu]], is OnlyMostlyDead from his prior injuries, and he managed to blast Depa's lightsaber away at the last second.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'':
** Happens in Creator/DanAbnett's ''Literature/GauntsGhosts'' novel ''Straight Silver'', when sniper Larkin passes out in the middle of a pitched battle. During a hallucination, his dead friend Bragg appears and tells him to wake up. At the time, Larkin actually is suffering from massive head trauma.
** Happens again in one of the later books, when the Ghosts are assigned to hold a hopeless position many of them see - and are helped by - dead ghosts. It turns out to be moral support from afar by [[spoiler:Soric, after he was taken by the Black Ships, projecting the images from their memories.]]

** This is the plot of ''Film/TerminatorSalvation'', given that the main character is executed at the beginning of the film.

When things are at their worst and the hero is all but defeated, timely intervention by a BackFromTheDead character saves his life and gives him the HeroicResolve to keep fighting. Usually, the character in this case really is dead and appears as a spirit, but sometimes it's the character's return from a DisneyDeath, or their apparently fatal injury turns out to be OnlyAFleshWound. Rarely, this is when it's revealed that the InstantDeathBullet wasn't so instant after all, and AlmostDeadGuy performs this one final heroic act before expiring in the aftermath with a drawn-out FinalSpeech.