Disney Death / Live-Action TV

Disney Deaths in Live-Action TV.

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• 24:
  • Season 2 has Jack captured by terrorists and brutally tortured to death. Yup, his heart actually stops and he's actually pronounced dead at the end of the episode. However, they manage to get a doctor to resuscitate him time at the very beginning of the following episode.
  • Additionally, late in its fourth season Tony Almeida is take hostage by the assassin Mandy and when CTU corners the two of them she seemingly blows them both up. Everyone is in shock and Tony's wife Michelle grieves, but Jack is eventually able to figure out that Mandy faked their deaths and he and Curtis are able to truly save Tony in time.
  • Two-thirds through Day 9, the cliffhanger for one episode has President Heller apparently get blown up by a missile. The following episode opens with everyone mourning his death, only for it to turn out that it was faked by Jack and Chloe to buy everyone some time.
• Death seems cheap in the series Ace Lightning, at least for the "video game" characters. Also subverted in one episode when Ace is surprised to learn from Mark that when humans die they can't come back in a similar fashion. This does not make Sparx's "death" any less traumatic...
• Angel: A good Mutant Enemy example is Lorne's head asking for the praising and extolling of his virtues. For whatever reason, his particular variety of demon can survive decapitation—the body needs to be mutilated. The bad guys didn't forget to, though—the Groosalugg, knowing Lorne was Cordelia's friend, switched his body with a soldier.
• Ashes to Ashes (2008) has one in the episode "Charity Begins At Home", with Shaz via CPR though it is actually a pretty well done and relatively believable. It's also quite violent as it leads to a very brutal beating of the "murderer".
• Partially subverted in Babylon 5. After calling down a nuclear bomb on his own position and jumping down a huge hole, Captain Sheridan really is dead. However, he's frozen at the moment of death by Lorien, the first living being ever to come into existence, who tells him he can "breathe on the remaining embers" of Sheridan's life. This means he gets to live for the remaining two years of the series, but Lorien's action only bought him twenty more years, so that he'll die at age 66.
• In the series finale of The Aunty Jack Show, she died of a heart attack. However in the specials and on her Twitter account, she was revived.
• In the series finale of Battlestar Galactica of all places. During the battle in the first half of the episode, Helo is shot and severely wounded while rescuing his daughter Hera from the Cylons. His wife Athena tearfully leaves him behind to save Hera (and at that point she wasn't the only one shedding tears), at which point he doesn't appear for the rest of most of the episode...only to turn up alive on Earth at the end of the episode, living happily with his family. He even had the standard Disney Death walking stick to at least acknowledge that he was injured earlier. Strange to see this trope in such a dark Anyone Can Die Crapsack World, but if any couple deserved a happy ending on that show it was them.
• Used twice (well, almost) in the season finale of Blackadder the Third. First, The Duke of Wellington fires a cannon at Edmund, but it is revealed a moment later that the cannonball was stopped by a cigarillo case. Several minutes later, (though this is actually a subversion) Wellington shoots the Prince Regent and, while Baldrick mourns him, the Prince gets up and reveals that he, too, had a cigarillo case, searches for it in his coat, realizes he left it on the dresser at home, and dies for real.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • In "The Body", Buffy comes to find her mother unresponsive on the couch, not breathing. She calls 911, she performs CPR, her mother gasps. Cut to the ambulance taking them to the scene in the hospital where Buffy's mom is so glad that Buffy came home when she did, or else—wait, why are we cutting back to the CPR? Oh. Well, the paramedics have arrived, and so we get to see them bring her back to the... They call the coroner. Harshest subversion of Disney Death ever.
  • Joss Whedon LOVES those teeth-kicking subversions.
  • This one was fairly obvious in advance, though; we'd already learned that the body was cold, so the (very short) back-to-life sequence was confusing but obviously not "real".
  • It's actually played straight in "Prophecy Girl", when Buffy drowns... only to be brought back to life by Xander's CPR.
• In the fourth season finale of Chuck Sarah apparently succumbs to being poisoned with Chuck even pulling a Please Wake Up. It cuts to sometime later, with the scene being a church implying that it's her funeral... and then seconds later pulls down to reveal that Sarah is fine and that she and Chuck are actually at their wedding.
• Happens in the finale of Criminologist Himura and Mystery Writer Arisugawa, with the circumstances stretching into the post-series Another Story specials. Himura and Moroboshi seemingly shoot each other, fall off a cliff, and perish in the waters below. It's quickly revealed that Himura managed to survive, and then, while later recounting how he survived, it's also revealed that Moroboshi is alive too. The gunshots were her henchman shooting them both in the leg, which is followed by Moroboshi's group carrying her off while Himura is chloroformed and presumably dragged out of sight of the arriving police.
• Doctor Who:
  • Technically, whenever the Doctor is about to regenerate in front of a companion who doesn't know what they're about to do counts, as they have no idea they're going to be alright, if a bit different.
    • The same applies to Jack Harkness, who gained Resurrective Immortality after Coming Back Wrong. And Rex Matheson from Torchwood: Miracle Day.
  • "The Ice Warriors": Victoria witnesses Jamie's apparent death at the hands of an Ice Warrior. However, while the man with Jamie was killed, Jamie himself survived.
  • "Planet of the Daleks": The Third Doctor believes Jo has been killed when the Daleks blow up the Thal spaceship in which she was hiding. In fact, she was rescued at the last minute by a Spiridon named Wester.
  • "Genesis of the Daleks": Following the Thals' missile strike against the Kaled City, the Fourth Doctor believes Harry and Sarah Jane (whom he had sent to warn the Kaled leaders) died in the attack. In fact, they were waylaid by Mutos and never even reached the Kaled City.
  • "Mindwarp": The Sixth Doctor is shown a scene in which Peri, her mind hijacked by an alien, was apparently killed. However, it later emerges that the scene in question had been fabricated and Peri is "alive and well and living as a queen".
  • "Survival": The Seventh Doctor has a head-on collision on a motorbike with the enemy, resulting in a huge explosion which we see nobody escape from. Ace begins to mourn his death after she finds his hat and his umbrella laying on the ground. We soon after find out he's somehow just ended up face-first in a pile of rubbish with his backside in the air.
  • "School Reunion" has the robot version happen to K9, although it is unclear if this is the same robot rebuilt (with the same personality and memories) or just another robot of the same model.
  • "The Doctor's Daughter": Jenny takes a bullet for the Doctor near the end of the episode. After the Doctor has accepted that she won't regenerate, he leaves her body with her fellow soldiers and goes off in the TARDIS. Suddenly she pops back to life, apparently none the worse for wear (seemingly due to the Terraforming process that was still ongoing), and takes off in a stolen spaceship (like father like daughter, apparently). The Doctor, however, is unaware that she came back to life.
  • "The Stolen Earth" ends on a cliffhanger wherein the Doctor has started to regenerate after being shot by a Dalek. "Journey's End" resolves this by having the Doctor use his old severed hand as a receptacle for the regeneration energy, allowing him to heal himself without having to change his appearance.
  • "The Big Bang" has two. In 1996, Centurion Rory is presumed dead from pulling the Pandorica out of the fires of the Blitz during World War II. He's actually the night watchman of the museum holding the Pandorica. The Doctor also gets one. He travels back in time a few minutes faking his death from a partially powered Dalek raygun. He uses this as a diversion to travel back to the Pandorica to jump start the universe in a Big Bang Two. Geronimo indeed.
  • "Let's Kill Hitler" plays this trope straight. The 11th Doctor has been poisoned by a brainwashed River Song to the point of no regeneration. After he's died, River redeems herself by sacrificing her regenerations to bring the Doctor back to life.
  • A season wide Double Subversion makes up the whole plot of Series Six. The opening, "The Impossile Astronaut", has the 11th Doctor shot dead and killed by an unknown assailaint in a space suit who later turns out to be River Song being forced to do it against her will. 11 later reappears a few moments later, but it turns out that the 11 everyone saw die is him sometime in the future, and because it's a fixed point in time, there's no way to stop it with 11 gradually approaching the day of his death. Then in the finale, "The Wedding of River Song", it turns out that 11 is able to Take a Third Option by meeting with the shape-shifting android assassin who attempted to kill Hitler from the aforementioned "Let's Kill Hitler" and having it take his form, revealing that that's the one who "died" in "The Impossible Astronaut," allowing 11 to survive and keep the timeline intact.
• Drake & Josh: In "The Great Doheny", a retired magician named Henry Doheny takes up residance at the Parker-Nichols house; to get him out, Drake and Josh host a magic show to get him out of retirement. The trick involves Doheny lying in a box while the boys impale him with swords and he teleports out unharmed; but when he does not teleport out, a doctor comes over and sees the swords killed him, thus a funeral is held. All of a sudden, Doheny appears, having did his best trick ever by coming Back from the Dead. It was revealed at the end that Megan was the one who came up with the trick.
• Rather mean subversion in Ghost Whisperer: At the end of season one, Melinda's best friend (and the only main character other than Melinda at this point) realizes that she, not her brother, is the ghost and she was killed in the plane crash earlier in the episode. The season two premiere reveals that she was merely in a coma, thus allowing her spirit to wander (as has happened at least once before) and she has a very good chance of recovery. Then Melinda wakes up; it was a dream and her friend really is dead. She has remained dead ever since.
• Heroes has two characters (Adam and Claire) whose power is essentially to always have a Disney Death: they come back to life, assuming that something isn't preventing them from regenerating, and if the thing is removed they regenerate as normal. This also allows Peter and Sylar to gain similar powers, from their abilities to absorb powers of others. To make matters ridiculous, it's revealed that if anyone is given a transfusion of Claire's (or Peter's) blood, they regenerate as well. This allows characters that have been definitely killed off to come back if needed (it may be that you can receive this transfusion even if you're dead — HRG must have been cold before he got his transfusion).
  • On the flip side, Mr. Lindermann has the ability to heal others which includes, apparently, bringing people back to life. As long as Linderman is nearby (and willing), anybody can have a Disney Death.
    • This is not so remarkable, given that it is a superhero show. The "willing" part is harder, though, because Linderman tosses Bad Powers, Bad People out the window by being a Big Bad whose power is healing. (He's a darned good cook, too.)
  • Except that Arthur Petrelli killed Adam.
• House:
  • During the series finale House is trapped in a burning building and dies when the building collapses on him. Paramedics pull a body out of the rubble and confirm that the body was indeed House. At his funeral, Wilson receives a text message from House during his speech. It turned out that House actually faked his death so he could be with Wilson during his final 5 months instead of spending it in prison.
• In Kamen Rider Dragon Knight the term venting is used to describe the disintegration of the losing Rider at the end of a battle. By saying that the Riders were trapped in a void instead of dead, it enabled lost Riders to be pulled back in for the climactic battle at the end of the series.
• Kamen Rider Revice sees Hiromi Kadota falling off a cliff and presumed to be dead, but way later (almost 10 episodes later) it is revealed that he survived, went back to live with his mother and lost his memory of when he was at Fenix.
• ADA Alexandra Cabot from Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is shot and declared dead in Season 5. At the end of that episode, Stabler and Benson are brought out to a secluded spot, where they meet Cabot, who has only been injured and are informed that she is going into Witness Protection. They are the only ones who know, creating some trust issues with Cragen when she reappears.
• Lost basically runs on Death Is Cheap:
  • "All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues" uses a very cheap Disney Death, when Charlie is found strung up by the neck, not breathing and with no pulse. But after a particularly protracted CPR session, Jack is able to revive him. Some fans decided to blame the unlikely event on the possibly magic island (similar to A Wizard Did It).
  • Shannon apparently dies in "Hearts and Minds", but the sequence is shown to have been a drug-fueled hallucination by her brother Boone.
  • At the end of season 4, the Kahana explodes with Jin on board. A few episodes into season 5, he's found alive and clinging to shipwreck.
  • In season 6, Lapidus is whacked round the head as the submarine sinks from the Man in Black's bomb, and he is presumed dead by viewers. However, he resurfaces clinging to debris several episodes later.
  • Near the end of season 3, Locke gets shot and thrown into a hole full of bodies, but eventually gets back out of the pit. He later mentions that he didn't die because the injury location was where his stolen kidney used to be, and if he'd still had that kidney, he would have died.
  • On the villain front, Mikhail Bakunin survived multiple seemingly fatal incidents in Season 3. Including impaling.
• In the Season 2 opener of Mayday, Captain Tim Lancaster is partially sucked out of a cockpit window, and everyone thinks he's dead, especially when the flight attendants see that his eyes are open and not blinking. To the surprise of everyone, he turns out to be alive and not even that badly hurt. (Mayday being a non-fiction series, this is a true story, but the episode plays into this trope by setting up the narrative to conceal Lancaster's survival and make the viewer think he's dead, only to hit them with The Reveal about halfway through the episode.)
• The Middleman episode "The Boyband Superfan Interrogation" plays the Robot Disney Death relatively straight (though with tongue firmly in cheek, as with everything on the show). Ridiculously Human Robot Ida is destroyed defeating the villain's scheme, given a hero's funeral — and then Wendy finds a box with a brand-new Ida robot inside. It is never mentioned again.
  • It is implied again that they can just 'get a new model' when Ida malfunctions in a later episode, although they don't realize this (or know how) until it's far too late, leading Wendy to start making an impromptu Video Will. Naturally, she gets out of danger at the last minute.
• Monarch: Legacy of Monsters: Dr. Keiko Miura-Randa is seemingly killed in the year 1959, being swarmed by aggressive Endoswarmers which cause her to fall down a deep, dark vertical tunnel in the abandoned Kazakh power plant. It's revealed in the last two episodes that Keiko survived being swarmed and the fall... and she's still alive and young in the 21st century, because the tunnel she fell down was a portal to a special region of Hollow Earth where the passage of time is drastically slowed, and no more than two months have passed from her perspective since her fall half a century ago. Although she's alive, the fact that her husband on the surface is long since dead, her other best friend is now an old man who mourned her for decades, and her infant son is now a man nearly twice her age who grew up thinking her dead is a cause for more than a few tears among both the cast and the audience.
• In the series 3 finale of Moone Boy, "Gershwin's Bucket List", George Gershwin, Grandpa Joe's imaginary friend, is assumed to have kicked the bucket upon Grandpa Joe's unexpected death following a line dance outing, only to turn up at his own funeral as Sean is delivering the eulogy.
• Power Rangers was doing this even before they were owned by Disney.
  • Power Rangers in Space: In the series finale, Andros has a final clash with his sister Karone which seemingly kills her. As Andros weeps over her body, she is revealed to be alive and free of the brainwashing that reverted her back to Astronema.
  • Power Rangers Lost Galaxy:
    • The two-part season premiere, Leo's brother Mike seemingly dies after giving him the Red Quasar Saber. It is later revealed that the crevice Mike fell down was the same one the Magna Defender was in. The Defender absorbed Mike's soul to free himself and later gives his life to resurrect Mike.
    • Kendrix performs a Heroic Sacrifice to stop Psycho Pink in "The Power of Pink". She is inexplicably resurrected in the season finale.
    • In the final battle with Trakeena, Leo activates a self-destruct device on his Powered Armor to destroy her and seemingly himself. As the Rangers fear he may be dead, he appears, his helmet damaged but still alive, and gives them a thumbs up.
  • Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue: In "Curse of the Cobra", Carter unleashes a point-blank energy blast upon the Monster of the Week after being told that it could possibly kill him too at that range. The rangers despair that Carter is dead, only for him to emerge from the rubble a few minutes later.
  • Power Rangers Wild Force: The Wild Zords, who are living creatures unlike most Zords in the series, are destroyed by Master Org in the finale only to be resurrected to defeat him for good.
  • Power Rangers S.P.D.: In the finale, the Rangers find a weakness that will allow them to destroy the Magnificence, the biomechinal creature that Grumm had been taking orders from. Unfortunately, as Cruger and his wife Isinia are still in Omni's body, this runs the risk of killing them too. The rangers destroy the Magnifince, and seemingly Cruger and Isninia along with it, only for the two to survive against all odds.
  • Power Rangers Mystic Force: Leanbow and Daggeron are killed by the Big Bad in the penultimate episode. They are revived in the finale just in time to finish off the villain.
  • Power Rangers Operation Overdrive: Mack destroys the final villain Florious and dies as well in the process. He is resurrected as a human by the Sentinel Knight.
  • Power Rangers Megaforce: Robo Knight gives his life to revive Orion, only to be seen fighting alongside the Rangers in the final battle.
  • In the Power Rangers RPM finale, Venjix breaks into Dr. K's lab, hacks her computers, and downloads everything to do with the Rangers. Using this data, he can not only "delete" megazords out of existence, but also the Rangers themselves. He finishes the first of the two episodes by "deleting" Gem and Gemma (Gold and Silver), but with help from Tenaya, Dr. K is able to retrieve their data and reassemble her first two friends to help defeat Venjix once and for all... or did they? The final scene of the series is one light on one of the Rangers' morphers lighting, red like the Venjix Eye, with the big V's theme music playing. One good Disney Death deserves another.
  • Its source material, Engine Sentai Go-onger, also features an example: in GP35, Yogostein turns Sousuke into a bronze statue, seemingly killing him off... until the next episode, where he's revived and defeats Yogostein in a one-on-one duel.
  • In Tensou Sentai Goseiger, Buredoran embodies this trope and is a rare villainous example. Not counting his reappearances in movies, he seemingly dies twice. First as Buredoran of the Comet and second as Buredoran of the Chupercabra when he's revived as BuredoRUN after being Only Mostly Dead. He's finally killed for good, ...for the time being, after his reveal as Brajira of the Messiah.
• Red Dwarf: This happens twice in "The Promised Land", with Rimmer first being believed dead when the bomb he is carrying explodes over a moon (before it's revealed that he did survive), and then Kryten shutting down near the end, only to be saved by Rimmer using his Light Bee to recharge him (at the cost of his Diamond Light powers).
• The first season finale of Robin Hood, where Marian is mourned, avenged, and then discovered to be still alive. (Setting the scene for a major audience shock when she dies for real in the second season finale.)
• Sliders:
  • In one episode, crooner Mel Torme helps the Sliders with their mission, only to apparently die in a car bomb. He inexplicably resurfaces at the end, though, to wish the Sliders well on their way.
  • Another episode had a rather cruel example. The characters land in a world run by the Russians and help the Resistance in one of their operations. During the pull out though female protagonist Wade Wells is shot and mortally wounded. The other main characters start to grieve for her till she suddenly appears right behind them alive and well. Turns out it was her double from this particular alternate earth that got killed not her.
  • The same method of death happens in another episode with Arturo. This was just stretched out for years after the show ended. It took the Word of God to clear things up.
• Spaced. Mike is shot by a paintgun to "save" his friend Tim. Tim sobs hysterically as Mike passes out in his arms and vomits yellow paint (Mike not Tim). Cut to the two of them walking out of the paintball centre, happily reminiscing the game.
• Lucretia in Spartacus: Blood and Sand was stabbed through her stomach by Crixus and she managed to walk up to her husband and she fell over, seemingly dead. Then come the next season, she was fine and dandy. The whole thing was lampshaded where everyone thought that it was the work of the gods.
• Stargate:
  • Stargate SG-1: Daniel Jackson has several of these. Considering he dies over twenty times in the series and all the movies, it's fairly understandable. The Sci Fi Channel once had a "They're dead, no they're not, yes they are, no they aren't!" marathon.
  • In the episode "Doppelganger" in Stargate Atlantis Rodney McKay dies from a entity that kills people in their sleep, while John Sheppard is trying to save him. Turns out, the whole thing was really John's Nightmare, and the character wakes up in the real world, perfectly fine, minus a technical cardiac arrest.
    • In the series finale, Ronan is killed by the Wraith in order to up the stakes for the remaining characters and then gets Ass Pull'd back to life (also by the Wraith, because they're a bunch of morons).
• Every other person dies once a season in Supernatural, but they always seem to make it back fine. Dean, Sam and Castiel alone have died a collective 20 times on-screen (with Dean dying an additional 100+, non-shown times in the time-loop episode). Why does anybody even try to kill them anymore?
• Another rather mean subversion in Ugly Betty in the beginning of the second season. Throughout the whole episode Hilda and Santos are shown in her bedroom going over details of their impending marriage, him having only been injured when he was shot. However at the end of the episode, it is revealed that it was all in Hilda's head, and that Santos really is dead.
• In the final episode of the original Ultraman series, Ultraman is felled by Zetton, and is Killed Off for Real, until Zoffy comes to rescue him.
• The ending of the second season of Veronica Mars has the season's Big Bad Cassidy detonating a remote bomb aboard a plane that presumably has Veronica's dad on it. However, it turns out that her father drove home and he wasn't on the plane.
• In the Voyagers! pilot "Voyagers", Bogg crashes the Wright Brothers' glider during an attempt to prove it works and winds up lying unmoving amidst the wreckage for a few minutes, causing Jeffrey to think he died in the crash. He's fine, if a bit battered.
• Happens several times in Walker, Texas Ranger:
  • In Season 3's "Till Death Do Us Part", Walker himself suffers this while trying to rescue a toddler whose mother's car was teetering off a bridge due to a hit-and-run accident while he and Alex were en route to a trial. The car teetered off the bridge and Walker, as a result, ended up in a coma. Walker eventually comes out of his coma after C.D. and Trivette catch the perpetrators of the accident: two selfish rich brothers whose daddy always managed to get them out of trouble.
  • "The Covenant" (Season 4), one of the show's Christmas Episodes, has Ernesto Lopez, the eldest son of one of Walker's close friends, Marta Lopez, being gunned down by a gang he once belonged to in a drive-by shooting after his younger brother and one of Walker's karate students, Tommy, refused to join, and frames a rival gang who they had shot just moments previously for it, prompting Walker to stop Tommy from throwing his life away in a quest for misguided vengeance and prove who was really responsible for the shooting. Ernesto spends the entirety of the episode hospitalized and luckily survives, but one season later in "The Brotherhood", he wouldn't be so lucky, thanks to a trio of dirty cops deciding to kill criminals who managed to get off on technicalities, having been accused of a rape that he did not commit until DNA evidence exonerated him; Walker warned those dirty cops that their malicious and foolish actions would result in an innocent person being killed.
  • "Deadline" (also in Season 4) is a more nightmarish example. The episode detailed Lindsay Hughes, the teenage daughter of state senator Warren Hughes being kidnapped by bank robbers in order to extort her father's fortune and being put through the worst hell imaginable of being Buried Alive until she finally suffocated and having her hopes and dreams stolen from her: graduating high school and going to college, meeting and marrying the man of her dreams, starting a family and career, seeing her friends and family again, and the fact that if by lucky chance she is finally saved, she will live with PTSD for the rest of her life and have to face the evil man that did this to her in court. Just as Walker and Trivette find the villains responsible, Lindsay has just run out of air in her makeshift coffin, but eventually regains consciousness after they dig it up in time.
  • Season 5's "Devil's Turf" has Walker going undercover as a substitute teacher at a high school to nail a drug pusher by the name of Mick Stanley (played by Sam J. Jones), who had been creating a deadly drug used to help students improve their sporting skills, but instead, kills them. Walker's contact, undercover rookie Ranger Danny O'Bannon, who was posing as a student, and whose older brother, Joey, is the school custodian, gets caught infiltrating Stanley's gym, which is the source of his operation, and is brutally beaten up and Left for Dead by the time he dumps him back at the high school. He is hospitalized for the remainder of the episode, but eventually pulls through after Walker, Trivette and Joey arrest Stanley and his goons before they could kill a student who was a regular at the gym, namely Tommy Landers, and his girlfriend.
  • Trivette isn't immune to this, either, having suffered this in "Sons of Thunder" (also in Season 5) while on the trail of Rod Barkley, who was once a police officer, but went on to kill the officers who put him away for abuse, a list that included Carlos. Trivette was shot twice while visiting his hideout, having been mistaken for Carlos, but both bullets missed the heart by less than an inch. Trivette was left in a coma for a while, but came out of it after Barkley is killed before he could be arrested by Walker, Trent and Carlos.
  • In Season 6's "Rainbow's End", this happens to the titular racehorse when one of the Villain of the Week's henchmen knock out one of the stablemen and steal his uniform in order to poison his food so he could lose an upcoming match against the villain's horse, Samurai. Rainbow's End still wins the race by a nose, but the poison takes full effect after the fact. Luckily, after Walker arrests the villain (having arrested the phony stableman earlier, who went on to confess his involvement in the attempted murder and the murder of another rival racehorse at the beginning of the episode), Rainbow survives the poison, and then wins the Texas Derby.
  • Joe Lopez, the husband of Marta Lopez, Ernesto and Tommy's father, and a paroled safecracker (played by Danny Trejo) suffered this in "Circle of Life" (also in Season 6). While trying to go straight and mend his relationship with his family after his release from prison after serving 15 years (during those years, he wasn't able to attend Ernesto's funeral), he assists Walker and Trivette in busting a gang of jewel thieves led by his parole officer, Buck Coburn. Coburn had also kidnapped Tommy for insurance purposes. When Walker and Trivette show up, Tommy employs a few karate skills from Walker to escape, and when Coburn tries to shoot him, Joe jumps in front of him, while Walker and Trivette return fire, killing Coburn. Carted away in an ambulance with Tommy onboard, Joe luckily survives his injuries. He is also granted a pardon from the Governor after testifying against his housemates for the robberies.
  • Season 7's "Jacob's Ladder" had this happen to the titular firefighter, Jacob Crossland (played by John Schneider), having been critically shot by the Firelake Bloods gang while he and his fellow firefighters responded to a fire the gang started; that house, in question, belonged to one of the witnesses they intimidated after one of their own was arrested by Walker and Trivette earlier in the episode. His young son, Adam, meanwhile, was grounded for spray-painting cars, with the duration of his grounding lasting until his community service hours at the Dallas H.O.P.E. (Help Our People Excel) Center were up, starting off embittered, at first, but eventually warming up while dealing with his father's injuries, especially so much as saving the Center from being burned down when it was attacked by the gang after the witness whose house was burned down the day his father was injured was being chased. Jacob luckily survived his injuries after Walker and Trivette brought down the gang once and for all.