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Really, as with Karma Houdini, almost every comic book supervillain will benefit from this trope. Only those who are notably unpopular or have since been replaced by different characters using the same gimmick will be done away with for good (even then it doesn't always stick).


The following have their own pages:


    Other Comics 
  • Cobra Commander, the Big Bad of G.I. Joe, is an apt representation of this trope. In the first comic book series, he was shot dead, only to find out that it was actually an impostor who was killed. In the first animated movie, he was turned into a snake, and later got better. He has also been caught in numerous explosions that should have left him killed or maimed, only later to return without a scratch or an explanation of how he escaped.
  • 2000 AD:
    • Judge Dredd:
      • Perhaps justified (EVENTUALLY) with Orlok the Assassin, responsible for millions of Mega-City One deaths during the Apocalypse Wars. Eventually, a psychic bombardment reformed his evil ways. In return he journeyed to the planet of Zerbia to fight the genetic cleansing dictatorship of that planet.
      • An apt representation would be the teenage serial killer PJ Maybe. He was able to assume the form of Mega City-One's mayor, and thus avoid detection from the Justice Department. Nevertheless, as mayor, PJ Maybe brought much improvement to the city such as bringing human unemployment to an all-time low of 92%, and allowing mutants greater access to the city.
      • Another apt representation are the Dark Judges who have murdered tens of millions, but are already "dead" so are repeatedly confined to orbs which they manage to escape from. They even teamed up with the Joker once in Mega-City One. Conveniently (yet once again) for the Joker, he was instantly teleported back to Arkham Asylum before Judge Dredd (who has a lot fewer qualms against killing) could issue a sentence to our trope namer.
    • Nemesis the Warlock: Torquemada is overthrown or killed several times, but he always returns to threaten the galaxy once again. This is intentional on Nemesis' part, who set out to make Torquemada his Arch-Enemy.
  • Darkhell from Les Légendaires, thanks to his Arch-Enemy status, got apparently killed twice and came back both time. Surprisingly, however, he was eventually Killed Off for Real during the Anathos Cycle. And while Word of God confirmed he wouldn't be back this time, his inheritance keeps taking a large part in the plot...
  • Deconstructed in Alan Moore's Promethea. The Captain Ersatz of the Joker, the Painted Doll, is revealed to have been a series of robots built by a traitor in the hero team Five Swell Guys, each robot being programmed to activate and climb out of the river with hazy memories when the previous one was deactivated. When they're all activated at once, they kill each other, and the last one standing decides to become a good guy.
  • Played with slightly in the Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics). In the "Endgame" arc, Julian Robotnik is indeed killed by his vengeful minion and nephew Snively; twenty or so issues played with the concept of other villains and problems following his defeat, only for a second Robotnik from an alternate timeline to enter and take over from his position. This Robotnik would later take the modern "Eggman" form seen in later games and continues being the Big Bad until the comics were cancelled in 2017.
  • Spirou & Fantasio (especially in the Animated Adaptation) has various criminals who routinely escape, but also Cyanure, the evil Robot Girl: Even when her creator decides to fully disassemble her, he eventually puts her back together out of loneliness.
  • Lampshaded in the first arc of Tom Strong with a subversion; whilst being led on a tour of one of his old bases by his resurfaced arch-nemesis Paul Saveen, Tom comes across a row of waxwork statues of some of his old enemies, one of whom "actually died that last time [you fought]" by falling into the Niagara Falls and snapping her neck, implying she (and the others) had a tendency to stage deaths of this nature. Subverted again when it turns out Saveen, himself thought to be dead, actually is dead as well; the 'Saveen' involved here is an imposter.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder. Since Mirage was originally meant to be a one-shot comic, the Big Bad was killed by having Donatello bat a grenade in his face, knocking him off the building as it exploded. As the issue got unbelievably popular, Shredder was brought back to life through a kind of semi-mystical cloning involving a kind of worm that mutates into the tissue it devours. However, this only worked once as the Turtles burned Shredder's remains on a floating raft to keep him from ever returning. He hasn't been seen since, the closest to a resurrection was a cluster of surviving clone worms briefly infesting a shark, but it's specifically pointed out as not being the Shredder. (The main difference between the original Mirage comics and every adaptation ever: The Shredder was originally intended to be a Token Motivational Nemesis, much like the burglar who killed Spider-Man's uncle than the biggest Big Bad. While nigh-unkillable in every cartoon and film series, and even every non-Mirage-created comic series, Mirage Shredder has no Joker Immunity because he was never their Joker.)
  • The Transformers:
    • Starscream, despite his prominence in the cartoon, was out of action for quite a while, being blown apart and imprisoned by Omega Supreme in issue 24. The UK comic had him break free in "Target: 2006" not long afterwards, and though he remained off-panel afterwards, he returned to prominence in the US comic for the Underbase Saga... in which he's destroyed by the titular power. Despite this, Megatron has him rebuilt a few issues later.
      • Regeneration One goes even further: Megatron revives several dead Transformers as zombies, Starscream (who was on the Ark when it crashed again) among them. However, he manages to escape annihilation from orbit and surpass several mental blocks placed on him, preventing him from being fully cognizant.
    • Megatron seemingly kills himself via blowing up the Space Bridge in a fit of insanity after Optimus Prime's death. Though he remained dead in the US book, the UK book had him survive and continue playing an active role. Then, Simon Furman took over the US book and had Megatron return there as well, retconning the Megatron in the UK book up to that point into being a clone (it's complicated).
    • Shockwave supposedly meets his end after falling into Earth's atmosphere in issue 39. The UK book (yes, it does this a lot) not only let him survive, but featured him in the very next issue (also allowing the above instance of Megatron's immunity to happen). When Furman became the writer for the US book, Shockwave returned without explanation there, too.
    • Galvatron has a long history of not staying dead on both sides of the pond:
      • The UK comic brought Galvatron into the story via Time Travel for "Target: 2006". Afterwards, he became a recurring antagonist that took immense amounts of punishment, yet would always come back none the worse for wear. In his final appearance, "Time Wars", he had half his face blown off by a weapon whose recoil kills the user, was attacked by nearly every living character in the book, and only because of a time-space rift was Galvatron finally killed off.
      • Once Simon Furman took over the US book, he brought in another Galvatron from a parallel timeline (the US book didn't include the cast from The Transformers: The Movie prior to this). Though he wasn't as recurring as his UK counterpart, Galvatron still managed to survive a crash that wrote Megatron, Starscream, Shockwave and Ratchet out, and was still able to return in Regeneration One for up until the final issue (where he met his end at Ultra Magnus's hands).
      • That wasn't even the first time Furman resurrected Galvatron: The UK comic storyline continued with the Autobots from the movie-era future who had helped destroy Galvatron returning to their own time... only to run into Galvatron. It turns out that their intervention in the past had changed history so Galvatron never went back in time and never died.
    • An even more and extreme example is Galvatron's creator (sort of) Unicron. Unicron appears in The Transformers: The Movie and dies. His head survived as Cybertron's new moon and is revealed to still be functional in several cartoon episodes. The comics set after the movie, which follow a different continuity than the cartoon, also depict him surviving and nearly having a new body built before his head gets blown up, but his essence gets absorbed by the Matrix and occasionally emerges in a demonic spiritual form to wreak havoc. To then confuse things, Furman then proclaimed that a ton of time travel in the comics had changed the timeline so that the movie never happens, allowing the Unicron of the present (1990, in that case) to show up and attack Cybertron before getting killed.
  • Subverted as early as 1965 in Gilbert Shelton's Help! magazine strip Wonder Wart-hog. At the end of "The Return of the Masked Meanie," Wonder-Wart-Hog feeds the Meanie into a hand-cranked meat grinder. "And this," says the Hog of Steel, "will insure [sic] that you don't come back and pester us, Meanie." Below the panel, a breathless narration box intones: "Will the Masked Meanie survive the meat grinder and return to harass society? Will he? What a stupid question!" Except, of course, that the Meanie did return in "Wonder Wart-Hog and the Merciless, Menacing Masked Meanie."
  • Tannarak, foe of The Phantom Stranger, took this to ridiculous levels. He was killed by a falling statue in his first appearance. Then he came back, and died when a temple fell on him. Then he came back again, and was killed when the phoenix he was riding on fell to the ground. Then he came back yet again, and was de-aged into nothingness - and then returned in Batman and the Outsiders where he died again, of course. Tannarak gleefully lampshaded this phenomenon, always telling the Phantom Stranger (with a completely straight face): "Hah! Did you expect a falling statue/collapsing temple/etc. to really kill me?"
  • Iznogoud is a rare case where this trope applies to the protagonist. While the titular character never dies, nearly all of his plans (with a few exceptions) usually end with him about to die, in a Fate Worse than Death or trapped in an otherwise inextricable situation, only to come back alive and well in the next book with no other explanation than Rule of Funny. A book titled Iznogoud's Returns actually was dedicated to explain how he came back from some of these situations, but even that book had some of his "returns" involving him escaping an inextricable situation only to end up in another one (something the reader actually is warned about at the beginning of the book).
  • Disney Comics' Phantom Blot, the Diabolical Mastermind who has demonstrated his will to Take Over the World and his willingness to murder all in his path, is somehow never sentenced to death whenever he gets arrested, allowing him to escape into the next issue. This is obviously because Disney's Moral Guardians would not allow it, but does not make sense in-universe, because the death sentence does exist in Calisota.
  • Olrik in Blake and Mortimer is a downplayed example. Most stories end with him either in prison or still at large, clearly leaving the door open for his return in the next story. The very first story arc, however, ended with him getting nuked, along with the entire capital city of the Evil Empire he was then serving. It's never explained how he was the only member of the imperial leadership to survivenote  despite their having all been in the same room. A few books later, the story ends with him left behind in a vast underground cave, just as the Atlantic Ocean caves in through the top and wipes the whole place clean. Somehow, he survives that too.
  • Lady X in Buck Danny plays this trope absolutely straight, somehow surviving a stunning series of story endings that absolutely should have killed her. This was actually lampshaded in her second appearance, with the story providing an explanation for how she survived her previous near-death experience, and showing her as having been badly scarred and traumatized. Later stories, however, drop this completely, more or less accepting that she's good enough to survive anything, and handwaving the lack of obvious scars or other consequences as plastic surgery.
  • In Chlorophylle, Anthracite has been apparently blown up on a firework, imprisoned several times, including in a high security jail, but he always finds a way to come back.
  • Usagi Yojimbo: While initially intended as a one-shot villain (which likely means he was meant to die for real the first time), Jei proved popular enough to have this trope apply. Struck by lightning and seemingly disintegrated? He survives. Stabbed by his own spear and thrown off a cliff into a raging river? He survives. Impaled by the sword Kusanagi? He...doesn't actually survive this one, but immediately possesses a swordswoman he'd previously wounded, so he basically survives. Absolutely nothing Usagi and co. have done has gotten rid of him for good—no matter what they hit him with, he always comes back eventually. Unlike most comics, the story later provides an explanation: Jei is a bodiless spirit who can possess people, and a spirit can't be killed for good.
  • Spawn: Violator plays this straight many times no matter how many times he was killed and sealed he always makes it back.
    • Jason Wynn he died and later came back recently as Disruptor
    • Kincaid is killed a couple times but also comes back
    • Malebolgia was killed but came back.
    • Overtkill being a cyborg can be rebuilt and brought back.
    • Curse also comes back from death. Really almost all spawn villains have this.
  • Extremely brutally defied in Invincible along other superhero comic cliches. The villains are just as subject to the comic's Anyone Can Die rule as the heroes, and many supervillains bite it over the course of the series and often do so with surprisingly little fanfare, even long-running major figures like Angstrom Levy, who is Invincible's archenemy and yet doesn't even live to see the final arc. The comic actually criticizes and deconstructs the trope quite a bit, as there are multiple instances where villains exploit the heroes' mercy to do more damage and a big part of Invincible's own Character Development is learning to accept that sometimes he just has no choice but to kill his enemies for the sake of saving lives. As a general rule, the more evil, dangerous, and unsympathetic a villain is, the more likely the heroes will take off the kids gloves and put them down.


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