In A Night on the Town/Adventures in Babysitting, a character gets a knife thrown at his foot. He's rushed to the doctor, the doctor administers the solitary necessary stitch. He then gets told that while he was administering this tiny stitch to a tiny wound a man with a stab wound just died. He then meets the plucky bunch of kids in the hall, who want to know what happened to their friend with the stab wound. He tells them he died, they go into a fit of mourning, he walks into the corridor asking everyone what they're crying about, "Don't you ever die on me again!", etc.
In Against a Crooked Sky, Charlotte is falsely accused of the murder of Cut Tongue, and Sam sees what he thinks is her being shot with an arrow and falling off a cliff. He sadly returns home to tell his parents that Charlotte is dead, and only learns that she's actually alive when she suddenly appears for a visit. It turns out that Ashkea took the arrow for her.
Ted appears to get run through by a sword in medieval England, causing Bill to mourn him ("Ted, don't be dead, dude!"). But it turns out Ted fell out of the armor just when he hit the ground; the armor got stabbed, not him. (Never mind the fact that he was completely strapped into this complex outfit.) It's also a Foregone Conclusion, due to the fact that Ted's future self had been seen alive and well earlier.
The sequel, Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, is built around this trope. A militaristic rebel from Rufus's utopian future sends robot duplicates of the title duo to kill the real ones as part of his plan to take over... and the robots actually succeed in offing them. However, their spirits manage to escape the Grim Reaper, and spend a good chunk of the movie literally journeying through Heaven and Hell to bring themselves back to life.
In The Boat That Rocked, Phillip Seymour Hoffman's character nobly sacrifices himself and goes down with the ship, broadcasting to the end. As the other characters are saved and jubilant, they take a moment to remember him, just as he splutters to the surface decidedly undrowned.
In Bride of Frankenstein, Henry is thought to be dead in the beginning but turns out just fine after being taken home.
In Cats & Dogs Lou is dragged out of an explosion unresponsive after the climax, seemingly dead. He wakes up after Scottie tells him he's his best friend.
Yes, even Lucio Fulci did this at least once (shenanigans of the living dead notwithstanding, of course) — City of the Living Dead has this happen early on, as Mary Woodhouse is presumed dead of shock and is taken straight to a cemetery for burial before regaining consciousness after finding herself six feet under. If not for Peter Bell, she would've suffocated to death for sure.
In Broken Lizard's Club Dread, Sam appears to have drowned in mud, but turns out to be not only alive, but also the actual killer.
Toward the end of Crocodile Dundee II the hero appears to have been fallen off a cliff, but we later discover that he and the villain had switched clothes. The characters figure it out before the reveal.
Cruz Diablo: When Marcela is convinced that Carlos is dead and she'll have to live the rest of her life with Marquiss Pedro de Florida, she decides to commit suicide with some poison Malvina left for her. The poison was actually replaced by Nostromus for one that only interrupts the life for a few hours, giving Cruz Diablo time to kill Diego de la Barrera and the Marquis.
The Dark Crystal has female lead Kira die in hero Jen's arms, but she is then revived at the very end.
In a particularly pointless version that removes the very last bit of pathos from the film, Snails in Dungeons & Dragons (2000). Especially egregious is that this ending was apparently at the behest of focus groups, who didn't like the original graveside ending where Snails is still clearly dead. The original scene was the closest thing to respectable dignity the movie could manage, but even that got stripped away.
In End of Watch, Taylor is shot in the chest and falls unconscious as his partner, Zeke, stays at his side, before the villains catch up and shoot Zeke fatally, leaving both protagonists lifeless in the alley as the cavalry arrives. The next scene shows an injured Taylor at Zeke's funeral.
In E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, the title character appears to have died from an illness. See also the climax of the infamous ripoff Mac and Me. Not only do Mac and his family seem to perish in an explosion when they get into a shootout with the police, but their young human friend Eric dies as well, as the kid was near the explosion. The filmmakers work hard to jerk the tears here, culminating in his mom arriving on the awful scene by helicopter (she'd been searching for him). But the aliens emerge from the flames unharmed, and use their powers to revive him.
In 2010's The Expendables (featuring a bevy of action stars from the 80s and 90s), Gunner is apparently killed by boss-man Barney who is forced to Shoot the Dog when Gunner goes homicidally berzerk in a drug-induced homicidal rampage after he went rogue due to resentment at being ejected from the team due to his continued drug habit. Cue implied Cradling Your Kill as Gunner whispers his dying message to Barney in exchange for a decent burial in an apparent Death Equals Redemption. In the epilogue, he is miraculously still alive and back to normal in a happy reunion with the rest of the team, a fact which is even lampshaded by Barney commenting on it, with Gunner replying that he's thankful that he was still spared by his friend despite everything that happened.
In Expend4bles, Barney seemingly dies at the end of the first half when Suarto takes out his plane with a well-aimed shot. The ending reveals he was Faking the Dead and used Jumbo Shrimp as a body double while he parachuted to safety.
At the end of A Fish Called Wanda, Otto is run over by a steam roller but manages to survive for one final gag.
Freebie and the Bean: Bean is shot in the chest. When Freebie returns to the scene, a blanket has been pulled over his face, leading Freebie to think that he is dead, until the ambulance ride, when he suddenly pushes the blanket off and starts talking. Freebie is so angry that he immediately gets into a brawl with Bean.
This happens may times in the Friday the 13th movies. Jason Voorhees just keeps coming back. Even when he's supposedly incinerated by the time Part IV is over, it's revealed at the start of Part VI that his (still-living, surprisingly enough) father went out of his way to pay for him to be properly buried. Tommy, already driven crazy by Jason trying to enter his mind from beyond the grave (to the point of almost becoming the his replacement in Part V), exhumes him to finish the job, but lightning strikes before he can torch him, and Jason is back yet again.
At the end of Furious 7Dom apparently dies finishing off Jakande during the climax, and all of Brian's attempts to resuscitate him seem to fail. The shock of this causes Letty to regain her memories and reveals that she remembers that they were married. Dom then opens his eyes moments later and it turns out he heard her say all of this.
In the Get Smart movie, Max appears to be killed when he is dragged behind a car that crashes into a train. It lasts long enough for a grief-stricken 99 to admit that she loves him before he appears behind her, battered but alive. But what about the train? "Missed it by thatmuch."
Ghostbusters (1984) ends with the heroes defeating Gozer, but tragically Dana and (to a lesser extent) Louis have seemingly died after being transformed into Gozer's demonic dog minions and then getting burnt to a crisp. The team barely has time to mourn before learning that the two are still alive, and human, inside the now destroyed demon husks and proceed to help them break out.
In Godzilla (2014), the nuke that was dropped on Godzilla in the beginning should've killed him, right? Nope, he lived through it, in true Kaiju style. This happens twice in the last battle, both times coming out alive but exhausted after a long and brutal fight with each of the Mutos. The first time occurs when he's buried by a skyscraper after crushing the male Muto against it. The second time occurs when he literally collapses to the ground after killing the female Muto, and stays there well into the next day before waking up.
Subverted/justified in Groundhog Day. Phil Connors is finally driven to commit suicide to escape from living the same day seemingly for eternity. He kidnaps the local groundhog and drives a truck off a cliff. Phil's cameraman says he might be okay, but then the truck blows up. The next thing Phil knows, it's morning again; not even his death can stop the time loop. Cue montage of him killing himself in every way possible.
Danny from Hot Fuzz gets shot and is caught in an explosion. The movie tries to make you think he's dead, but it's really his mother's grave.
One of the most mind-boggling examples is in Hudson Hawk, when a friend of the Bruce Willis character, who seems to have died in a car fire shortly before, shows up again and explains, "The sprinkler system turned on!" This in spite of the fact that the car careened off of a cliff and exploded upon impact with the ground (but it is a parody/comedy). Since the line immediately following is, "yeah! I bet that's what happened!" its mind-boggling improbability can be chalked up to the Rule of Funny.
In Independence Day, our two heroes set off a nuclear explosion in the alien mothership and try to Outrun the Fireball, but it catches up to them. Cut to their friends on the ground having their victory celebration interrupted by news that they had lost contact with the heroes. We get about five seconds for the mood to set in before they see something on radar, drive out to the desert and find them walking away from their crashed ship unscathed.
In Iron Eagle, Chappy gets shot down during the mission, and Doug is forced to go alone. However, it's later revealed that Chappy was picked up by American forces after he got shot down.
In the sequel, Doug is shot down by Soviet pilots in a dogfight within the first few minutes of the movie, but in the fourth movie, it is revealed that he had ejected from his plane, but was later captured and held prisoner by the Soviets.
In Jurassic Park III, Alan Grant's assistant Billy redeems himself for putting them all in danger by stealing raptors eggs by making a Heroic Sacrifice to save the Kid Sidekick from pteradons and is last seen being pecked to death by a number of them. Except about half an hour of screen time later, when the survivors are picked up by a rescue chopper, they inexplicably find him already onboard, with noticeable but apparently not life-threatening injuries.
In Killer Klowns from Outer Space, the Klowns' spaceship blows up at the end of the film with Dave and the Terenzi brothers on board. All three of them are alive and well a minute later.
In Lethal Weapon 2, a Smug Snake diplomat shoots the Mel Gibson character, who falls into a pit. In response, the Danny Glover character shoots the diplomat. Then he goes down into the pit to check on Mel Gibson. And guess what? He's fine! Well, mostly fine, anyway.
In Lethal Weapon 3, Lorna is shot several times by Jack Travis with the cop-killer bullets. However, after Riggs kills Travis, it turns out that Lorna had actually worn two bulletproof vests prior to this shootout, but it still wounded her.
Subverted amusingly in Little Big Man. Cheyenne chief Old Lodge Skins, Jack's blind mentor, has finally grown tired of life. He and Jack ascend a hill where Old Lodge Skins prays for his death and lies down with his eyes closed. It then begins raining. Old Lodge Skin blinks, then sighs. "Sometimes the magic works. Sometimes it doesn't." and they both go back to their village.
Frodo is seemingly killed when he is stabbed by the troll in The Fellowship of the Ring, and again in The Return of the King when he is poisoned by Shelob but turns out just to be paralyzed. (Both incidents are canon.)
In The Two Towers, Frodo appears to fall to his death, but we are immediately shown that he only fell a couple of feet into the fog. (Not canon.)
Also in The Two Towers, Aragorn is seen to fall over a multi-hundred foot cliff and all the characters mourn, but it turns out he's completely uninjured, besides a little dizziness and some scrapes. (Definitely not canon but almost lethal to Viggo Mortensen who came close to drowning while filming that.)
In The Return of the King, Faramir is grievously wounded in battle and would've been killed with fire, albeit accidentally, in his insane father's suicide attempt had Gandalf and Pippin not shown up. After he's rescued, he regains consciousness. (Basically canon.)
The apparent death of Bucky Barnes in Captain America: The First Avenger is central not only to the Captain America trilogy, but also the whole Avengers arc. Bucky appears to fall to his death during a combat mission during WWII, but is instead captured, brainwashed and periodically cryogenically frozen by HYDRA and used as their most effective assassin-weapon for over seventy years. The discovery of this by Steve Rogers and his commitment to saving his lifelong best friend leads to the discovery that SHIELD has been infiltrated by HYDRA, the effective dismantling of both those organizations and the “Civil War” between the Avengers which then leaves the whole planet more vulnerable to intergalactic threats like Thanos.
Zigzagged in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014). Plant-being Groot heroically sacrifices himself to save the other Guardians—but his friend Rocket finds a still-living twig and plants it. By the end-credits, we see a little baby Groot growing again. But he looks subtly different, and in the sequel we find that he has quite a different personality. Word of Godconfirmed that Groot had in fact died, and "baby Groot" is a different being—essentially, the old Groot's son.
In Black Panther (2018), during a Duel to the Death for the Throne of Wakanda, T’Challa is thrown over a waterfall by his cousin Killmonger. He gets better though and virtually Lampshades this trope when he returns for the final battle.
In the climactic final battle of Eternals, Ikaris grabs Druig by the throat, lifting him into the sky, hurls him into the side of a volcano and then violently lasers him into the ground for good measure. Ikaris then flies back to the other Eternals and reports that Druig is gone, earning himself a revenge-fueled beatdown from a grief stricken and enraged Makkari, only for the supposed murder victim to turn up just in the nick of time to save Sersi’s life so that she can kill the Celestial Tiamut and prevent his planet-destroying Emergence, which was the reason Ikaris tried to kill Druig and previously killed Ajak in the first place.
On a slightly Meta level, the previous deaths of fellow Eternals, Ajak and Gilgamesh did make the potential killing of Druig more credible in the eyes of both the rest of the Eternals and the audience, having set up an Anyone Can Die precedent.
The Mummy (1999): Ardeth Bay pulls a You Shall Not Pass! on an army of mummies. Cut to the end and he's alive somehow note He was originally scripted to die, but the filmmakers liked him so much that they wanted to keep him alive for the sequel, which was easy to get away with since his fate was shown off-screen.
In The Mummy Returns, Anck-Su-Namun stabs Evy to death; her son Alex later gets his hands on the Book of the Dead and brings her Back from the Dead.
Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters is probably the record holder. The film shows some five Disney Deaths, of which one barely lasts a minute.
In The Philadelphia Experiment, the protagonist David Herzeg dives back into the time vortex after breaking the mechanism that was keeping a 1943 Navy destroyer and a 1984 Midwest town suspended in hyperspace. After the vortex collapses, Allison is wandering through the freshly restored town in 1984 when David appears out of nowhere, having not only survived but magically returned to his Love Interest.
The Princess: Linh appears to be slain by Julius before he's killed as a classic case of Mentor Occupational Hazard, but turns out to have survived at the end. Foreshadowed by the fact that Khai is shown hustling her off, presumably to see to her wound.
At the end of Rambo: Last Blood, Rambo is shown wounded and bleeding after killing Hugo and his men, having been shot twice. Perhaps on his last leg, he sits on a chair on the porch of his father's house, as if to pass out and die from his wounds. After the montage of previous movies are shown during the credits, he gets back up and takes a horse for another ride.
Rio Grande: Kirby Yorke is hit by an arrow in the final battle. He seems to die, but actually he is just wounded.
In 1934's The Scarlet Pimpernel Sir Percy Blakeney steps out in front of a firing squad, and we hear the "Ready! Present muskets! Fire!" and the report of the muskets. Then Sir Percy comes in for his hat.
Short Circuit subtly lampshades, then utterly subverts the Robot Disney Death version of the trope. The SAINT-model robot that NOVA Robotics destroyed (and cannibalized) at the end of the movie was a mindless, remote-control replica which the real Number Five was controlling from the safety of the supply van. This, after showing how said van was completely equipped with enough spare parts to build a whole new robot from the ground up, Number Five's expertise at reassembling himself and rewiring his own circuits, as well as him playing with the TV using his remote-control transmitter.
In Short Circuit 2, Number Five (who in this movie insisted on being called Johnny Five) seemed to die after running out of both his main power and backup power just after capturing the jewel thief who ordered him to be destroyed in the first place. He is brought back to life by Magical Defibrillators which were used to "recharge" his batteries, and also gave the human actors a chance to do some of the best soap opera acting this side of General Hospital.
Marv and Hartigan both get these in Sin City where the characters suffer a dramatic wound and the screen goes black for a few seconds. We then cut to them surviving in one way or another.
While picking up the defeated Commando Elite in his yard in Small Soldiers, Alan sees an inanimate Archer. He starts to repeat himself and Alan thinks his chip was fried, but Archer and the rest of the Gorgonites survived.
In Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), when Sonic and Robotnik crash into Green Hills in the climax, Sonic ends up being so beaten from having to run from Robotnik, not to mention the force of the explosion, that he apparently starts to die. Then, when Tom admits that Sonic was his friend while supposedly mourning him to the town, Sonic suddenly receives a burst of energy that revives him, the same energy that caused the blackout, getting the strength he needs to defeat Robotnik.
Space Jam: A New Legacy: After performing a move that glitches the game, Bugs Bunny ends up fading out of existence. He later reappears at the end of the film, after LeBron sends his son to game design camp.
Done a few times with the droids in the original trilogy, but perhaps the most memorable is when 3PO gets destroyed in The Empire Strikes Back after walking in on some Stormtroopers, and Chewbacca manages to get him functioning again and reassembles him offscreen much later.
Superman Returns. When Superman was stomped to death by Lex Luthor on his Kryptonite island, he was on the verge of death, but eventually he sprang back to life.
In Terminator 2: Judgment Day, the T-800 is seemingly beaten then impaled by the T-1000, leaving Sarah and John Connor helpless. Then his backup power source turns on, and he heads off to save the day. Moments later he does die for real, but by choice. In the novel version, he deliberately feigned death after the impaling in order to give himself the chance of a surprise attack.
In Terminator Genisys, "Pops" appears to die after holding off John in the quantum field generator, but survives thanks to a little dip in the liquid metal.
Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen: When one of the Twins is sucked up by Devestator, all the other characters are sad. However, moments later, he fights his way through Devestator's head.
Also happens with the main character near the end, who has a dream vision of the original Primes before being miraculously brought back. Lampooned upon in Kirbopher's Revenge of the Lollin where a solider says "he's dead," cutting to a few Primes on a cliff stating "And now he isn't!"
Prime gets his own Robot Disney Death too, as did Megatron in the first movie.
In Transformers: Dark of the Moon, the Autobots were believed to have killed by Starscream under Dylan Gould's orders when the Xanthium was destroyed during launch. However, it turns out they faked their deaths (hiding themselves in the booster section instead of the Xanthium itself) in order to have humanity realize that the Decepticons aren't true to their words, and then pulled a Big Damn Heroes moment in Chicago to reveal their survival.
In Two of a Kind (1983), the fate of the universe hinges on whether a morally dubious couple (played by John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John) can make sacrifices for each other out of their newfound love, which would prove to God that humans are redeemable. She keeps him from going to prison for his attempted bank robbery that started the Earthly plot, but what about him? In the climax, with minutes left to go before God starts over with everything, she is taken hostage by a robber (actually a disguised Satan, whose existence is at risk!) and his attempt to save her leaves him dead. This proves a sufficient sacrifice, and not only does God spare the universe, He also brings the dead lover back to life.
Ray's son Robbie in War of the Worlds (2005). About halfway through the movie, he leaves his father and runs into a battlefield which is then obliterated in a fiery Martian burst of death from which nothing can survive; at the climax, however, he shows up at his mother's house in Boston without so much as a scratch. Granted, we never actually saw a body, but it's still pretty cheesy and something of a cheat.
The heroine of Whale Rider nearly drowns in the climax (and her narration informs us she "was not afraid to die", since she's rescued the pod), but she is found and recovers in the hospital.
Wild Wild West. Jim West. He takes a point-blank gunshot to the chest and falls 80 feet to the desert floor but survives because he was wearing one of Artemus Gordon's "Impermeable" bullet-proof vests.
In Wanda Nevada, Beau is shot in the chest with the Apache ghost's arrow. He manages to remove it before passing out. Wanda cries over him and begs him not to die, but leaves and ends up back at the Orphanage of Fear. She thinks he's dead until Beau arrives to pick her up in the new car he bough with the gold he and Wanda found in the Grand Canyon. It's never explained how he survived.
In What About Bob?, when Dr Marvin attempts to wake Bob the next morning after he's spent the night with the Marvins, he doesn't wake up. A great deal of foreshadowing has gone into suggesting that he would die. But then he is woken up by the alarm.
Spoofs
Parodied in Kung Pow! Enter the Fist: the Chosen One's mentor Master Tang, love interest Ling, rival Wimp Lo, and his beloved dog are dying. After imparting their "final wisdom" to him, it turns out Master Tang's not dead! And Ling's not dead either! And dog is fine!
Chosen One: Then surely Wimp Lo!... [he runs to Wimp Lo; we hear flies buzzing] Chosen One: ... oh.
In Last Action Hero, when the Schwarzenegger character receives a fatal blow in the "real" world, he needs the main character's help to get back into the movie world, where the same shot qualifies only as a "flesh wound".
In National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1, the Jon Lovitz character (modeled after the Joe Pesci character in the Lethal Weapon sequels) dies early on, only to return a few scenes later. When asked how he got back, he replies, "I thought this was the sequel!"
Many characters in Monty Python and the Holy Grail receive what ought to be fatal blows, only to keep on coming. Most memorably seen in the Black Knight ("It's just a flesh wound!"), but repeated in variations throughout the movie by other characters ("I'm not dead yet!")
Another memorable moment has the King of Swamp Castle actually managing to subvert the typical Disney Death and lampshade it at the same time by acknowledging that a man previously stabbed in the head by Lancelot is now suddenly on a road to recovery and then adds in that suddenly he died without explanation... and the man he describes proceeds to do just that!
In Scary Movie 3, Brenda is killed in the first act. In Scary Movie 4, she is inexplicably alive. Cindy even remarks that she thought she was dead. Brenda simply replies that a lot of people thought that.
In addition to its more serious examples, Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope also features a more humorous take when C-3PO and R2-D2 are desperately trying to save Luke, Han, Leia, and Chewbacca from being crushed inside a trash compactor. R2 successfully shuts it off, leading to everyone in the compactor to start crying out in joy, but 3PO initially believes that they're screaming from being crushed to death and that they failed to save them in time.
that Groot had in fact died, and "baby Groot" is a different being—essentially, the old Groot's son.