A character who is dead or having a
Near Death Experience steps out of his body and observes what is happening with other characters in the story at that time. The events so observed are shown one way or another to be real and not the fantasy of a dying brain. Alternately, the character gets to review key events in his life, providing the justification for a
Clip Show. Either variant can turn into yet another version of
Christmas Carol or
Wonderful Life.
The sequence usually ends with dead characters moving on to the Afterlife, and
comatose ones waking up (occasionally as a
Mistimed Revival). Reawakened and revived characters rarely remember the experience as more than a
blurry dream, although specific recollections are sometimes allowed for punchlines or
An Aesop.
Examples:
Manga
- Giant Robo uses the narration version of this trope to pull off Anyone Can Die. Ginrei narrates the beginning of the first episode as if she's flashing back after the end of the story. After she dies in the last episode, her disembodied spirit says a few lines in a post-credits epilogue.
- Ash and Pikachu go through this in the Pokémon episode in which the team goes to Lavender Town in order to catch a Ghost Pokemon(which he does...kind of). Hilarity Ensues with Misty and Brock.
Comic Books
- This was the whole idea behind the DC Comics character Deadman, who died in his first story - and became a superhero as a result, fighting crime in spirit-form while investigating his own death.
Film
- The Sixth Sense has a child who can see all sorts of Dead Men Walking. Including the protagonist, who is totally unaware he's dead. It's so old now as to have become a catch-phrase, but hey, a spoiler is a spoiler.
- The film Ghost, of course.
Live Action TV
- An entire episode of M*A*S*H is told from the point of view of a soldier's ghost.
- Desperate Housewives manages to kill off its Narrator at the start of the first episode. She continues narrating, giving us glimpses into the personal lives of her still-living friends that they don't get to see in each other. She actually appears to Lynnette in one episode.
- The protagonist of Yu Yu Hakusho spends the first four episodes of the show as a ghost while trying desperately to get back into his body. (The arc is extended in the manga, but generally goes the same way.)
- MacGyver spends an episode in spiritual limbo after the bad guys first put him into a coma, and then try to poison his bed-ridden body. He escapes through the aid of a recently-deceased relative.
- The last episode of season five of Curb Your Enthusiasm has Larry David (playing himself) dying and going to Heaven. He eventually proves so annoying that his guardian angels send him back into his body, much to the disappointment of his friends and family.
- Mr Belvedere had the titular character experiencing this; at first, it seems that everything's going comedically wrong without him, but it turns out that life goes on.
- The bleak Doctor Who spinoff Torchwood tried Something Completely Different with the more lighthearted, sentimental episode "Random Shoes", in which a recently deceased character observes (and subconsciously influences) the protagonist Gwen as she investigates his death.
- Subverted in an episode of Scrubs: as various doctors are around a man's body (masking it from view) and finally saying that they lost him, a man walks up and begins to talk about how seeing himself die like that was strange. He even starts giving a speech about death itself...until J.D. comes up and angrily reminds him that he's not dead, just insane.
- The season two episode "Epiphanies" gave Battlestar Galactica's on-the-brink-of-death Laura Roslin the chance to remember The End Of The World As We Know It. It was the day she got told she had terminal breast cancer, got dumped and fired by the former President, stopped a union crisis, listened as the Cylons nuked her homeworld, got sworn in as the new President, and left a whole bunch of people in the hands of the Cylons. Oh, and she figured out Gaius Baltar betrayed everyone because he was making out with a known Cylon. 'Cept she can't prove it. Luckily, she said Screw Destiny and woke the heck up : due to some hybrid blood from the extra-special baby Sharon was carrying..
- Dean of Supernatural did this while in a coma in the season 2 premiere, and his brother used a Ouija board to communicate with him.
- In Stargate SG-1, episode "Meridian", Dr. Jackson lies dying of radiation poisoning. While the other characters take turns sitting at his bedside, he is in deep conversation with Oma Desala about whether he is satisfied with the life he led or not. Eventually, he makes himself visible to Jack to tell him to let him die. Then he walks through the active Stargate and ascends.
Literature
- Literary example: Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman, which contains a subplot of the ghost of Maeve Livingstone watching the investigations of her own murder.
