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"Mutant Heaven has no pearly gates, only revolving doors."
"Four of you tried to kill me in the past... and one of you succeeded!"
"Some of the people there think I'm dead." "Why?" "Because they killed me."
"I'm fine, Dad... how are you?"
"I'm dead, son. Other than that, you mean?"
"No, that's what I was asking."
A major character, possibly even a popularly nasty Big Bad, has been Killed Off For Real, pronounced dead and buried. However, the established laws of the universe allow for Functional Magic, a Sufficiently Advanced Alien, Applied Phlebotinum, Deus Ex Machina or similar agency to intervene and subvert what naturally follows dying. Namely, staying dead. (In some cases, in explanation isn't even bothered with.)
Maybe the writers were running short of new ideas and decided to rehash some old ones. Maybe the actor has recently acquired some indecent photographs of the producers. Maybe the new writer was devastated his predecessor killed the character. Who knows? He is now Back From The Dead.
The form of afterlife can vary pretty widely. They may "simply" be resurrected or reincarnated (usually as a sentient pet animal), physical or mental alterations optional; or we may now have a ghost, or vampire... zombie, angel, godling, demon... haunted car... okay, that last one will be hard to top.
If a character cannot come back from the dead entirely, they may show up as a Spirit Advisor or The Obi Wan, letting them be literally dead, but allowing them to interact with the living.
In the Star Trek Voyager episode "Mortal Coil", Neelix actually dies for real but is (some would argue unfortunately) brought back to life some 18 hours later. This is an example of Contractual Immortality. In order to qualify for being brought Back From The Dead, a character in a TV show would have to be still dead at the end of one episode and resurrected, by whatever means, in a later episode. (2-parters do not count.)
See Death Is Cheap for when this becomes a regular feature of a 'verse, Sorting Algorithm Of Deadness for the odds a particular death will stick, and the accompanying betting pool for which modern Lazarus is due back next.
A general rule of thumb is that if you Never Found The Body, the character is Not Quite Dead in the first place (and therefore not a candidate for this trope). One of the most common examples of this is that if a character falls off of a cliff or other high structure, especially into water, he or she is almost guaranteed to still be alive. An explosion gives more reasonable odds. Of course, even if Deader Than Dead, even if you see the body and you've atomized it so finely that each individual molecule is a galaxy apart....there's always Time Travel. Removing the entire thing from existence can be done, and equally undone by a similar Deus Ex Machina.
Examples:
Television
- Stargate SG-1: Apophis is Killed Off For Real in "Serpent's Song", only to come Back From The Dead in "Jolinar's Memories". He is killed again, but manages to return in the Alternate Universe created in "Moebius".
- My Mother The Car, in which the main character's mother is reincarnated as an old car. I Am Not Making This Up.
- Buffyverse examples: Buffy herself, Angel after Season 2 (although that one's debatable), Spike (Heroic Sacrifice in the last episode of Buffy, returned as a ghost on Angel). Many Buffyverse characters were Killed Off For Real, though, sometimes despite efforts to bring them back supernaturally (Joyce Summers and Tara; Whedon actually did once plan to resurrect the latter, though). Angel also did a Lampshade Hanging on this trope in the episode "Shells", in which Angel and Spike talk about how in "their world", dead doesn't always mean dead. The trope is subverted in the same episode, as it's made clear that even though Fred's body is being used by the demon goddess Illyria, Fred can't be brought back by supernatural means as one might expect (The writers did plan on eventually splitting them apart though).
- Can't forget Darla, who was staked in early season of Buffy and was later resurrected in the last season 1 episode of Angel.
- Angel's comic book follow-up series does find a way to un-kill Fred, retconning the story so that she and Illyria are sharing a body.
- But the all-time king of Back From The Dead is Murdoc, MacGyver's arch-nemesis, who died at the end of (almost) every episode in which he appeared, usually by falling off a cliff and exploding while shouting an enraged "MacGyver!"
- John Winchester (played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan) pulls this off in Supernatural, dying in the season 2 opener "In My Time of Dying", and then charging out of the gates of hell in the season finale.
- This happens a lot in the show. Mary Winchester makes an appearance in "Home" and "What is and What Should Never Be." Jess also comes back for the latter episode. To be fair, this is a show about the supernatural.
- One of the stranger Back From The Dead examples is in Star Trek Deep Space Nine, where Jadzia Dax is Killed Off For Real in the sixth season finale. The Dax symbiont, however comes Back From The Dead as Ezri at the end of the seventh season premiere, thus making her half Back From The Dead, half Jonas Quinn, with just a hint of The Nth Doctor thrown in for good measure.
- It should be pointed out that absolutely no-one was surprised by this as the whole symbiote-carrying-the-wisdom-of-many thing is the primary distinguishing feature of thee Trill species and had already happened a couple of times to other Trill, and even once before to Dax, on the show.
- Also worthy of note is the planet where Kai Opaka died in a shuttle crash. And was subsequently resurrected by nanomachines that saturated the environment of the planet, but which only worked there. The nanomachies were built to create a prison world where two warring factions were condemned to eternal conflict, coming back to life every time they were killed.
- Also, the Vorta. Weyoun just keeps coming back, no matter how much this irritates everybody. He got his last death in the finale, though, with the cloning facilities gone... Or did he? Some believe there would have been a backup clone still waiting, somewhere.
- Done in soap operas every so often. An example would be Den Watts in Eastenders who was Killed Off For Real (with a gun concealed in a bunch of daffodils) only to be brought back years later as a ratings stunt.
- Parodied (along with almost every other Soap Opera trope) in the movie Soap Dish, in which Kevin Kline plays a soap opera actor whose character is brought back to the series some twenty years after his in-series death. Whoopi Goldberg plays a writer who goes into the archives and learns that his character was decapitated, leading to the line, "How can I write lines for somebody without a head?"
- Villains of Farscape made a habit of dying and then coming back for more. One villain, Durka, came back twice until Rygel took his head off and stuck it on a scepter.
- Kara Thrace on Battlestar Galactica — notable because, although her eventual resurrection had always been planned, the actress was instructed to give a number of vaguely disgruntled-sounding interviews to stir up doubt about whether or not she was done with the show. (This editor admits to having been completely taken in.)
- The Master in Doctor Who has made numerous returns from the dead. This particularly occurred in his 1980s incarnation, where at one point he was even completely incinerated (in "Planet of Fire"), only to return the next season without a scratch. In his most recent appearance he appeared to be Killed Off For Real, but we all know better.
- Well, it helps that time lords have a phoenix like ability to regenerate, the only reason to think he may finally be killed off for real in the last 'death' is that The Doctor witnessed him willingly preventing himself from regenerating.
- A less well known but no less egregious example from Doctor Who is Davros, who was killed in 3 out of 5 of his appearances, but survived every single one of them.
- Pushing Daisies plays with this idea; the main character can bring back the dead for one minute — any longer, and someone in random proximity dies in their place.
- In Stargate Atlantis the fan protest over the death of Carson Beckett and various campaings resulted in the character returning in the fourth season finale — only to be put on ice again...
- only to return as a reoccurring character in the next season
- Tony Almeida of 24, who was last seen dying and having a blanket placed over his head, is now confirmed to return in season seven.
- In an episode of Nip Tuck, Julia's mother dies in a plane crash. However, when looking through the bodies, Julia finally finds the unidentifiably charred, but still human-shaped, remains of her mother. Suddenly, the body takes a huge gasp. Terrified, and knowing the woman will not have much a chance at survival anyway, Julia smothers her with a pillow. Later, she enters her apartment, where her mother has been sitting safe and sound all along, as she decided not to take the plane today.
- John Sheridan from Babylon Five (Complete with a Monty Python And The Holy Grail reference).
- A number of characters on Lost have been seen walking around the island, or even off of it, despite having very clearly died. The most notable is Christian Shephard, who died before the series began, and whose body also disappeared from his coffin.
- Jordan Collier (like those initials?) from The 4400.
- Bobby in Dallas. Resolved by making an entire season turn out to be a dream How original.
- Averted three times, with three of the principal characters, in American Gothic: in the very first episode, Merlyn Temple is murdered by Sheriff Lucas Buck—but we see her as a ghost immediately in the very same episode and she remains around as Caleb's Spirit Advisor for the rest of the series; Caleb himself later dies after an electrocution accident, but is immediately resuscitated by Sheriff Buck's powers; and in the penultimate episode of the series, Buck is seemingly killed and buried (after being stabbed in the third eye, only to see his eyes pop open in the coffin just before the credits roll. (He isn't dug up until the series finale, however.)
- Witchblade the television show had one of these per season: Danny in season one and Kenneth Irons in season two. In both cases the character was clearly dead, but stuck around all season in a less concrete capacity.
- Done to death (no pun intended) in the 5th season of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. First, Iolaus was dead, then he was a ghost in a cave in Ireland, then an avatar for Dahak the Evil God, then a "Guardian of the Light", then a jester from an alternative universe until he became a merman then alive for real.
- In Due South, Cst. Benton Fraser's dead father, Sgt. Bob Fraser, proved so popular that he returned to the show as a spirit guide to his son—albeit an irritatingly unhelpful one. In a later season, Fraser Sr. even sets up an extradimensional office in Fraser's office closet.
- And then, there's Jamie Sommers. In her debut episode in The Six Million Dollar Man, she suffers a cerebral clot during her debut mission, goes berzerk, and dies at the end of the episode. Popularity Power, however, made ABC to do some Executive Meddling to retcon this death so that the characters in the show would work on a way to repair the clot while Jamie is kept in suspended animation. She, however, suffered amnesia as a side effect of fixing the clot, thus she and titlar six million dollar man Steve Austin were unable to resume their relationship until the 1987 reunion movie, where an explosive accident cured her of her amnesia.
Film
- Spock is Killed Off For Real in Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan, but comes Back From The Dead 2 years later in Star Trek III: The Search For Spock.
- Pirates Of The Caribbean: Captain Barbossa and Jack Sparrow both return from the dead, with help from other characters. The characters comment on it in At World's End: "There's never a guarantee of coming back. But passing on, that's dead certain."
- Parodied in The Truman Show, in which Truman's "father" — who was long ago written out of Truman's "life" — has become such a pest in trying to get himself back onto the show in that he's even managed to get Truman questioning the nature of his reality, thus forcing the producers to write him back into the show. When questioned as to how the heck they intend to explain away the fact that he is now back the dead, the director — obviously winging it — blurts out "Amnesia."
- Gandalf certainly fits this, along with certian other death tropes. He even falls into an abyssal pit and everything, so nobody actually sees what happened next. And not only does he get sent back to the living world, he's sent back superpowered. Well, more superpowered. Of course, being a lesser god means that maybe he cannot be Killed Off For Real to begin with.
- The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen offers a double whammy of this, although one is only suggested. First, the villain of the movie turns out to be Professor Moriarty, nemesis of Sherlock Holmes, who everybody thought got killed at Reichenbach Falls a few years before the time of the film. Then, at the absolute end of the movie, a witch doctor is performing a ritual at the grave of Allan Quatermain, the League's leader, and the skies darken and the ground trembles. The suggestion, which presumably was a setup for the sequel that never got made, was that Allan was being brought back from the dead.
- Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (Again!)
Western Animation
- Teen Titans: The story arc for the fourth season involves Slade, the Big Bad from the first two seasons, coming Back From The Dead to serve as The Dragon to the new Big Bad, Trigon. This example is especially notable because with comic books (and therefore their adaptations) the usual resurrection is a retcon saying that the character was not truly dead. Slade's death was a Never Found The Body, and Robin's hallucinations of Slade in a later episode proved to be poisoning by someone heavily hinted to be Slade, so the stage was set for it to prove to have been a Not Quite Dead or one of his many robot duplicates... and then we find that he was very much dead when he appeared to die, and had been revived by the series' version of Satan as a messenger!
- In The Transformers: The Movie, among the many Transformers killed off include Optimus Prime and Starscream. In subsequent episodes of the TV series, both come back. Optimus Prime initially appears as a Spirit Advisor when his successor, Rodimus Prime, journeys into the Matrix of Leadership. In "Dark Awakening", Optimus is brought back to life as a zombie, only to sacrifice himself again to save his fellow Autobots. In "The Return of Optimus Prime", he is completely revived and restored, and survives the end of the series (only to be Killed Of For Real in a Heroic Sacrifice in the Japanese series Headmasters, although resurrected in the Expanded Universe story Battlestars: The Return of Convoy). Starscream returns as a ghost in two episodes, "Starscream's Ghost" and "Ghost in the Machine"; in the latter, Starscream receives a new body from Unicron, returning to life, only to get blasted off into space. Starscream's spark makes a return appearance in the Beast Wars episode "Possession".
- In Thundercats, Jaga (The Obi Wan of the series) dies of old age while guiding the Thundercats' ship towards Third Earth, but he returns as a Spirit Advisor to team leader Lion-O (and eventually the rest of the team as well). Besides that Mumm-ra is supposedly killed on at least three occasions, but of course, as long as evil exists Mumm-ra lives! The Berzerkers were also killed (by Panthro sinking their ship) in their first appearence. This is confirmed when the ghost of the Captain Hammerhand shows up a few episodes later. Then he comes back with a look and a new crew in the second season. And of course, there's Grune the Destroyer, who dies then harrasses the Thundercats as a ghost.
- In the two-part Grand Finale of Harvey Birdman Attorney At Law, Phil Ken Sebben claws his way up from the grill of the bus that struck him dead the previous season, and says "Hah ha! Final episode stunt casting!" He then spends the entire episode driving the bus in reverse back to the city, just in time to arrive in the final scene and run Harvey over, killing him off for real. Odd thing is that in the episode where he is hit by the bus, he apparently gets cremated.
- In the first five seasons of South Park, Kenny dies in nearly every episode and appears again in the next as if nothing had ever happened. In fact, there was a two-parter where, after dying in the previous episode, he reappears out of thin air next to his friends. He, of course, goes on to die at the end.
- Yes, how can South Park be forgotten here? The poor Kenny is killed in unlikely ways in very nearly every episode. It is indicated in one episode that his mother is producing new Kennys at an incredible rate, but how they all end up with the same name, friends, and rotten luck must be an example for this trope.
- The Venture Brothers In the last episode of Season 1 the boys are killed. In the first episode of Season 2 their clones are reactivated and filled with their stored memories. Dr. Venture explains that this is the thirteen time it has happened - and shows all previous deaths.
Comic Books
- Depressingly common in American Super Hero comic books, to the point that whenever a popular character dies, it's a given that they'll be back on their feet five to ten years later. At most. Two of the most egregious violators are Jean Grey of the X-Men and Donna Troy (formerly Wonder Girl) of the Titans. At one time, it was said that "Nobody ever stays dead in comics, except Bucky, Uncle Ben, and Jason Todd." Naturally, since that phrase was coined, all three have at least shown up, though not all of these returns were truly Back From The Dead.
- Lampshaded in X-Factor, where Siryn gets the news that her father, Banshee, one of the X-Men, is dead. She simply doesn't believe it; the X-Men come Back From The Dead more than anyone else in the Marvel Universe (once the entire current team sacrificed themselves only to be resurrected at the end of the issue), so she's sure he's just pretending to be dead as part of some plan.
- Also Lampshaded once in Excalibur, when Magneto muses that they all seem to have a "survive anything" power.
- And, of course, Mags himself has had several "final" encounters with the heroes (and with worse villains.) His most recent appearance ends with a Never Found The Body situation.
- And although it hasn't happened yet, virtually every discussion among the comic-knowledgeable (as opposed to the general media) about the death of Captain America includes some guess as to the circumstances where/when he'll come back. He's done it before, after all.
- Lampshaded in Astonishing X-Men. After Kitty finds out that Colossus isn't really dead, she warns him that if he's a clone, robot, ghost, or from an alternate universe, she's okay with that, but if he's a shapeshifter or an illusionist, she'll kill him. Obviously, this happens a lot.
- A few issues later, Cyclops comes up with a cunning plan in which the first two steps are 1) Kill myself. 2) Get resurrected. If it wasn't for the fact that it worked more or less perfectly, this would almost be a case of being too Genre Savvy.
- In The All-New Atom, when Jason Todd, Donna Troy and Ryan Choi go to a (most likely fake) Heaven, they meet Ted Kord, who comments, "The recidivism here is shocking. Sometimes I think me and Bruce Wayne's parents are the only ones with a permanent parking space." He also comments "And Jason Todd, too? Didn't you just get parole, like, the day before yesterday?"
- And since then, Ted has been brought back from the dead, too.
- Actually Booster Gold saved him just before his death, using time travel. When it was revealed that Ted's death was necessary to preserve the time stream, he went back to restore his original death, not to die differently. Shortly thereafter, Rip Hunter succeeds in saving Booster's sister Michelle by snatching her just before her death. This is justified not on the grounds that Ted was shot and Michelle killed by an explosion, so that the lack of a body might not disrupt time in the second case, but because Michelle was a time traveler from the future and her timeline was not as fixed as Ted's. Timey Wimey Ball, anyone?
- A storyarc of Fantastic Four doesn't even bother with the pretense. A few pages before the end of an issue, the Thing is killed; the cliffhanger of the issue is Sue receiving a call from Reed about how he intends to bring him back to life. Naturally, a few issues later, the Thing is back as usual.
- The creators of Ultimate Marvel had promised that this ‘verse would be free of the "revolving door or death" policy and who died there, would stay dead. After they said that, both Professor X and Beast were killed but "got better". Both fall more under Not Quite Dead than this trope, though. In particular, Professor X's death was revealed to have been fake in the issue after it happened.
- Sort of justified with Thanos of Titan, with Death being his lover, and all. A fact he often lampshades to other characters:
Thanos: Death, Thunder God, is akin to lovemaking. It gets better every time.
- This reached its apex in the recent cosmic crossover Annihilation, when Thanos is seemingly Killed Off For Real by Drax The Destroyer, then officially becomes Death's consort.
- Mr. Immortal's power is a parody of this; his only major power is that he will always come back to life a few seconds after dying.
- And who can forget the classic storyline and graphic novel The Death of Superman? After "dying" in battle with the mindless monster Doomsday, four Doppelgängers appear! Which one could be the real Superman?
- Is it the mysterious black-and-blue colored Superman with the thick shades? Nope! Hyper-advanced clone/golem made from marble, controlled by the Eradicator, and powered by Superman's "corpse".
- Is the half-Terminator Cyborg Superman the real deal? Nope! He's Hank Henshaw, the DCU equivalent of Reed Richards, using stolen genetic material and kryptonian alloy stolen from Superman's birthing matrix. I mean rocket ship. Also, the only one who's actually evil.
- Is the Metropolis Marvel
Superboy Superman who claims to be a clone the real deal? Nope! He's a... well, he's a clone. And half his genetic material came, not from Superman, but from Lex Luthor. Weirdest parents ever.
- Is the mysterious armored Steel the new Superman? Nope! He's John Henry Irons, the DCU equivalent of Iron Man, and never really claims to be the new Superman, though some reporters think he's the only one deserving of it.
- So, in the end, Superman was actually resuscitated soon after his "death", spent some time in a coma, and eventually was woken up by androids. So nobody was Superman, Back From The Dead! Don't you love happy endings?
- However, this trope might actually be hugely subverted in the Marvel Universe. For the upcoming Secret Invasion story arc, Earth's superhero community has been infiltrated by Skrulls. Marvel has implied that some or all of the heroes who have returned from the dead have a good chance of actually being Skrull infiltrators. This was quickly proven when Elektra turned out to be a Skrull; so far, Captain Marvel's return has also been revealed to fall under this.
- The writers of Amazing Spider-Man attempted to be edgy when they devoted a 12-part series that ran across multiple Spider-Man titles and ended with Peter Parker getting his eye ripped out by a vampiric villain before getting killed. Of course, no matter how much the creators of the arc attempted to convince the readers that Peter was truly dead, he ended up coming back with more organic powers, as well as a new suit built for him by Tony Stark.
- Completely subverted (not to say stomped on) by ElfQuest. After One-Eye of the Wolfriders is killed in battle, Leetah the healer succeeds in reanimating him, but he is effectively brain-dead because his spirit has left his body. His lifemate Clearbrook has his body preserved in suspended animation in the hope of someday reviving him, but eventually decides to free his spirit completely by letting his body finally die.
- As already pointed out at Death Is Cheap, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures was a notable exception to this trope, killing several characters without returning any of them to life. The scene of the Mutanimals in Hell was fortunately just an illusion conjured up by villain.
- Justified in Iron Man, if the Iron Man armor is destroyed but Tony Stark, the man actually wearing the armor, manages to escape intact. On occasion, Iron Man's foes will defeat him, and think they have destroyed Iron Man...until Stark comes back with a new and improved suit.
- In Journey Into Mystery (Thor after Thor had died at Onslaught's hands), the Norse gods discover they are targeted by Set, the Egyptian God of the Dead. They travel to his country and are attacked by two people Set's mooks had killed. They bring one, Red Norvell, back to the land of the living by the expedient of grabbing him and dragging him back with them.
- Parodied in Peter David's Incredible Hulk. Rick Jones' fiancee Marlo is dead. He goes to Doctor Strange and points out that everyone in the room has returned from the dead.
Rick: Wong, have you returned from the dead?
Wong: Well, yes.
Rick: And Doc, have you come back from the dead?
Doctor Strange: Yes, but I AM a professional.
- Eventually he asks the Leader to bring her back from the dead. He does.
Anime
- Rozen Maiden's Suigintou pulls a Back From The Dead after getting killed in the last episode of Season One and is revived in Traumend.
- Fushigi Yuugi: The Killed Off For Real members of Team Suzaku are brought back as Spirit Advisors in the final episode, possessing volunteers so they can contribute to the fight. The OV As have their ghosts show up a few more times before finally using Reincarnation to bring them back for good.
- On Gekiganger 3, the Show Within A Show of Martian Successor Nadesico, Joe Umitsubame comes back from the dead, piloting the original Gekiganger 3 robot, to help the rest of the team defeat the show's Big Bad. A character watching this episode comments on the fact that people in real life (like the Killed Off For Real Gai Daigouji and Tsukomo Shiratori) don't come back from the dead, another example of the show's contrast of Gekiganger's idealistic worldview and the "reality" of Nadesico. Ironically, in that very same episode, the apparently-dead Admiral turned out to be Not Quite Dead.
- Kotomine Kirei is still around in Fate Stay Night, even though he 'died' at the end of Fate Zero (a prequel). Shirou also dies a couple times during the story and is revived during the course of the episode.
- Muhammed Avdol of the third part of Jojos Bizarre Adventure was shot in the head by Hol Horse (giving Polnareff a lesson about not being a selfish prick, and working together), but came back in a later chapter (where it was revealed that the bullet bounced off his skull). The kicker here is that he's killed off only a few chapters later by Dio's Dragon, Vanilla Ice.
- Before him, in the second part, Stroheim blows himself up with a grenade in an attempt to kill Santana, who is possessing him. Some twenty chapters later, he returns as a cyborg.
- Everyone in Sailor Moon is expected to die near or at the end of each arc, usually for the sake of being Team Cannon Fodder, but sometimes for an actual reason.
- Tokyo Mew Mew takes a page from Sailor Moon and kills off the whole cast in the Grand Finale, only to bring them back with a single Mew Aqua and True Loves Kiss. (The latter was only for one person, otherwise, it would get really silly.)
- The Bronze Saints in Saint Seiya seem to suffer from this, considering they "die" (or at least, they're dealt fatal blows) by the end of each saga. The series HandWaves this by claiming that Athena can bring them back from the brink of death; however, Hades himself can reanimate the dead and turn them into Specters for his army.
- Dragonball. Started with Bora after he was killed by Tao Pai Pai, and then "wishing someone (or a group of someones) back to life" became the standard use for the Dragon Balls. Became downright silly when the limitations to this (no wishing back someone twice, or someone who had died more than a year ago) were removed, as every single casualty in the series could be undone easily.
- The Book of Darkness, the Wolkenritter, and the corrupted self-defense program from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha are able to perform this repeatedly thanks to the Book's Rejuvenation Program. You can rip off their very life force and even obliterate them without a trace using a weapon that distorts the very fabric of time and space, but as long as the Rejuvenation Program is active, they will eventually be revived.
Literature
- A Song Of Ice And Fire has had a few characters engaging in post-demise activity. Interestingly, the ones whose resurrection is most straightforward return in whatever state they were in when they died, to the point that one resurrected character, Catelyn Stark, is referred to by fans as unCat since her resurrection.
- Just as Douglas Adams made the ultimate Kill Em All in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a radio play pulled a very big Back From The Dead: the series' multiverse.
- Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, because it deals with a reincarnation mythos, has an interesting variation on this trope: people who die don't stay dead (if they serve the Dark One), but they return to life in entirely new bodies. So not only does the reader get to engage in the guessing game of "who did this new character used to be", and in at least one case a fun Gender Bender takes place, this also means that none of the other characters will recognize the resurrected Forsaken. A side example is the case of balefire, which instead of literally resurrecting a dead character, changes the timeline so that they never died in the first place. This becomes an important plot point later.
- Wulfgar, in RA Salvatore's Drizzt Do'Urden novels. ...which was kind of all right, because it makes cosmological sense in D&D, but he was forced into it.
- That said, he was in the Abyss, and returned a much more tormented character, so his death has quite a few (unpleasant) ramifications.
- While D&D has its share of resurrections, Manshoon
 of Forgotten Realms invented new one. His unique Stasis Clone spell ensured his continuous existence despite insufficient caution. That is, as long as he cared to steer clear of few people who has power to strip him of this convenience.
- Alphanderry comes back as an amorphous energy being after his Heroic Sacrifice and gradually returns to just like he used to be. On the other hand, Valashu dies and is brought back on the next page good as ever.
- At the end of the most recent book in The Pendragon Adventure series, this happens to every single traveler that has died over the course of the series, including a few that had died just a few chapters before.
- Both Tasslehoff Burrfoot and Raistlin Majere in Dragonlance. Even being literally crushed under the heel of a Cosmic Horror isn't enough to put the kender down for good, and as for Raistlin, being killed by the goddess Takhisis and eternally tormented, only to first come back temporarily to chat to his nephew, to, after returning to that afterlife, coming back again sans magic to save the world and then to die again, this time promising that he will move on to the afterlife and never come back, and then to come back a third time to lead the gods back to Krynn, and promise, once more, that this time he's not coming back. We can only hope.
- The Princess Bride, anyone? Westley comes back from the dead not once, but twice. Sure, the first time he was only presumed dead, but the second...
- Neverwhere: As quoted above, the Marquis de Carabas gets Killed Off For Real but had the foresight to arrange his resurrection in advance, letting him come back with useful information because people talk in front of the dead.
- In American Gods, Laura is revived by a magical coin placed in her grave, but you wouldn't call her exactly alive...
- Also part of Wednesday's plan involves this.
- Bacchus from Classical Mythology pulls this one off as a baby. Hera in a subversion of Infant Immortality sends the Titans to kill Bacchus as a baby, which they do, eating all but his heart. And Zeus, in a bit of unusual childbirth puts the heart in his thigh until it regrows into Bacchus.
- Emperor Palpatine, arising once again via spirit transfer, clone bodies, and other such things. It was a controversial bit of the EU, but this is the man who arranged his rise into power via a long, involuted and complex Xanatos Roulette.
Webcomics
Video Games
- The epitome of Back From The Dead would be Dracula, who has been killed continuously in movies, novels, and shows. In the Castlevania video games, Dracula has been resurrected over 20 times!
- Bowser, while he rarely truly 'dies' in a game, played this trope straight in New Super Mario Brothers, in which Mario/Luigi drops him into lava, and watches his flesh burn and melt off of him in an uncharacteristically gruesome manner. He appears again later, ressurected as a skeleton by his son, who eventually also completely restores him to a bigger, badder form.
- Used in Super Robot Wars Original Generation Gaiden. Alfimi dies in OG 2, but comes back by merging with Axel Almer, who is mortally wounded and dying. This causes them to both come back as half human, and half Einst. Axel also had a Heel Face Turn during this.
- A staple scenario in Tekken. After being thrown to the ravine and thought to be dead, Heihachi Mishima turned out to survive, climbed back up, beat the one who did this to him (his son Kazuya), and threw him to the volcano. But Kazuya still manages to come back to life, because some researches retrieved his remains and gave him a new body. And finally, the fifth game, Heihachi was thought to be killed after he was nuked... (Heihachi Mishima is dead, or so Tekken 5's prologue states) but he still came back! Even the resident ninja Raven lampshaded this.
- Krista and Mr. Whittlebone in Twisted Metal: Head-On reappear from the second games as ghosts.
- In the Quest For Glory series, the final confrontation with Ad Avis in the second game has him plummeting off the railing. Good news is that the fall kills him. Bad news is that he rises from the grave a vampire Hellbent on revenge.
- The Lucasarts Adventure Game The Dig features a ruined alien civilization so advanced that they could even bring the dead back to life using 'life crystals', which becomes a central point of the story, as it turns out there's more to the crystals than just resurrection...
- When sentient beings die in Final Fantasy X, their souls must be Sent to the Farplane (by a Summoner or a Yevon priest with similar spiritual abilities) lest they become Fiends. However, those with sufficient strength of will can resist either fate, and roam the world as Unsent: "people" that are, for all intents and purposes, dead, but retain a physical shape and can interact with others as though they were alive. Such is the case with Seymour, after being killed at Macalania Temple, Auron, who was killed by Yunalesca ten years prior, the Yevon High Clergy, and Belgemine. Ostensibly, Yunalesca is also an Unsent.
- Final Fantasy IV seems to kill and resurrect its characters more often (and more improbably) than the novel Candide. In particular, one character jumps out of an airship with a nuke strapped to his chest and detonating it in mid-air in order to seal up a giant hole in the ground (IIRC, to keep the enemy from coming through it), replacing it with a mountain range. You'd think he'd be killed by 1) the fall, 2) being crushed by thousands of tons of rock, or 3) being right at the center of a nuclear explosion, but later on your party visits the underground realm of the dwarves, and guess who they find lying in a hospital bed (the explanation being something along the lines of "the dwarves nursed me back to health!")?
- In Jeanne D Arc, Jeanne must fight an illusion of Liane within Roger's heart. She's joined in this battle by the ghost of the real Liane. After finishing the game once, Jeanne can win Liane's charred pendant at the Colosseum, and ask Liane's ghost to rejoin the party permanently. The ending doesn't change, however, implying that she remains dead afterwards.
- Jerkass Scrappy Algus/Argath came Back From The Dead in the PSP remake of Final Fantasy Tactics, but he did not change his personality, and thus pretty much only came back so Ramza can kick his ass again, now straight to hell. Considering how much hated Algus is, him coming Back From The Dead to get his ass kicked again can be considered a non-sexual Fanservice
- In Planescape Torment, not unlike Mr. Immortal (see Comics, above), this is the main character's whole power. You're actually trying to find out how to stop doing it in a way that is spiritually satisfying. (If you want, you can get a Nonstandard Game Over by pissing off the Lady of Pain or other being of deific might.)
- Joshua of The World Ends With You seemingly comes Back From The Dead (another of his many What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic moments), but it's subverted when we discover that he didn't actually die—he simply teleported to the Alternate Universe Bonus Chapter to avoid the deadly attack of Minamimoto.
- And let's not forget Minamimoto's Taboo refinery sigil, which he used to come Back From The Dead after his failed kamikaze attempt. He has Hanekoma to thank for fixing it, though.
- Really, how could you have forgotten Zero? This editor won't bother counting the number of times he has managed to die and come back.
- You forget Sigma, who comes second only to Dracula when it comes to Back From The Dead, and he has a damn good excuse, being The Virus and all.
- How'd you forget Pokemon Mystery Dungeon 2? Technically, it's back from the non-existant, seeing as the main character fixed the timeline, thus wiping him out of existance, but still!
- Two Words: Albert Wesker
- Subverted in Metal Gear Solid Where it's revealed Liquid Snake never actually posessed Ocelot through his arm and it was actually Ocelot using a combination of drugs, hypnosis, and nanomachines to make him think he was Liquid for a complex Xanatos Roulette
- Not quite. Word Of God has it that he was possessed by Liquid in MGS2, but had the arm replaced afterward as it was becoming troublesome. The drugs, hypnosis and nanomachines came in at that point to fool the
Patriots La-li-lu-le-lo.
- In Grand Theft Auto IV, if you accidentally kill a girlfriend or other character important to the plot, they will later come Back From The Dead and tell you to pick them up from the hospital. However, this troper has heard that it is possible with some of the lesser girlfriends to kill them off permanently if done a certain way, as in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
- Near the end of Syphon Filter 2, Teresa is gunned down by Chance, The Mole. It appears this was supposed to be a Final Death, as Logan says "I'm sorry" to her dead body and they even hold a funeral, but in the sequel Syphon Filter 3 she is Retconned back from the dead, revealing that she faked her death to expose the conspiracy.
- The Shining Force Gaiden games do this with the Big Bad from the first returning as a vengeful ghost near the end of the second.
- Being a homage to Superheroes, it's not surprising that the most used and coveted inspiration in City Of Heroes is those in the Awakening family, which bring you back from
death defeat. In some missions, going in without a good number of these dooms you to failure.
- Even though Link and Zelda of The Legend Of Zelda are legacy characters, Ganondorf is the same guy in each of the games. He has died five times, with no explanation as to how he comes back each time, although b
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