Disney Death - Television Tropes & Idioms

Arguably, the first instance of this trope is the death of Disney's Snow White. The scene is pretty well dragged out to make first-time viewers (i.e., children, audiences in 1937 who never heard the story) think that she's dead.
Pinocchio (1940) has a Heroic Death rescuing Gepetto from the whale. He seems gone, but surprise! He's a real boy now and fully alive.
Memorably and vividly used by Disney in Lady and the Tramp (1955), where old Trusty is lying there dead/not dead.
In 101 Dalmatians, one of the initial litter of puppies (Lucky, although in the original book it was Cadpig) appears to be dead, but soon turns out is not. Yes, a Disney Death moment for a character that's only just been born.
Played for laughs in The Jungle Book (1967): after Baloo is knocked unconscious by Shere Khan, Bagheera gives him a touching eulogy. Turns out Baloo was alive all along and enjoying all the nice things Baggy was saying about him. "Don't stop now. There's more, lots more!"
- It is an interesting fact that Bagheera's speech is one composition of different quotes from the Bible.
The Brave Little Toaster ends with Toaster jumping inside an industiral conveyor belt in order to save The Master. It was virtually crushed to pieces, but within a few minutes is repaired by The Master.
- Earlier in the film, Lampy used himself as a lightning rod to recharge a battery, and appeared to "die" in the process.
In Robin Hood, Robin "dies" in a hail of arrows while swimming across the moat, sinking under the water and the bubbles slowing until there are none. It turns out Robin had a reed, which he breathed through until it was safe to surface.
One especially notorious Disney example is The Fox and the Hound (1981). Chief falls down a cliff, bounces off about 6 or 7 rocks on the way down, and... he's dead. But wait! After a terrifying chase scene for Todd, Copper goes back and it turns out that Chief just has a broken leg. He fell down a cliff and he gets away with just a broken leg. (IMDb says this was done for much the same reasons as Lady and the Tramp, but it's more damaging because Copper's hatred of Todd from that point onward isn't as well motivated as a result.)
- When you consider that he does die in the original book, this becomes an example of Adaptation Decay.
- Apparently, even the makers of the film argued over whether he should have really died. The supporters for his death even cited that as well as falling off a cliff, he was almost hit by a train. One excuse for his survival was that they'd never killed a character in a Disney movie before and weren't going to start with him. Seems like whoever said that forgot about Bambi's mother.
  - Or Tod's mother, in the exact same movie
In Disney's version of The Black Cauldron (1985), Gurgi nobly sacrifices himself, but then Taran trades his sword to the witches who then resurrect Gurgi, with magic.
- More Adaptation Decay. In the original book, the sacrifice was made not by Gurgi, but by an obnoxious secondary character named Ellidyr. He doesn't come back. And then his cool but equally nasty horse commits suicide.
When Basil is thrown off of Big Ben in The Great Mouse Detective, he disappears into the mist, presumably having plummeted to his doom along with the villain. The characters mourn for a moment, expecting the worst, but then of course Basil turns out to be okay and good times are had by all.
- Though doubtful, this could be a nod toward Sir Arthur Conan Doyle killing off Holmes in The Final Problem and bringing him back in The Adventure of the Empty House.
In Beauty and the Beast (1991), the Beast must find love before the last petal falls off of an enchanted rose. The Beast finds love from Belle, then dies, and the last petal indeed falls off the rose — but since she declared her love before he "died", thus breaking the spell, he gets back up anyway and becomes a human again. Maybe it's a little extra reward from the Enchantress for not killing Gaston when he really had every right; it goes a bit far, but the combined circumstances seem to make it slightly more touching and less "groan".
The second page quote above is of course from the first Aladdin sequel, The Return of Jafar, in which Iago goes through this as part of his Heel Face Turn coupled with a Heroic Sacrifice.
- Aladdin himself also experienced a Disney Death in one episode of the TV series.
A similar situation to Basil's example happens in A Goofy Movie; Goofy falls down a waterfall into the mist of censorship. There's a pause and some tense music, but then it's revealed that his son Max has caught him by the britches with a fishing hook. Well...Goofy cartoons never do run on logic.
In Pocahontas (1995), John Smith is shot and presumably dead. But then he gets tended to and sails back home to England.
- He was barely tended to. His friends said that if he didn't go back to England for more modern medicine, he WOULD die from the injury.
- Yes, because a three-month-long voyage full of malnutrition, a rocking boat, and colonial-age English hygiene is such a great way to treat a gunshot wound.
Esmeralda from The Hunchback Of Notre Dame}}. And because in the original novel she really does die, we can chalk this one up to Adaptation Decay.
Megara from Hercules. See, she would've been dead for real, until Hercules goes and literally reverses it. And before that, in the middle of the film, it happens twice in the same scene during the epic fight between Hercules and the Hydra; once the audience within the film thinks he's swallowed, the next time they think he's crushed (and they feel a little more remorseful by now).
Finding Nemo plays with this TWICE. Firstly when Dory is lying on top of a turtle seemingly unconscious when she suddenly springs up and starts a game of Hide and Seek and then later in the film when Marlin arrives at Sydney to find Nemo floating upsidedown in a plastic bag appearing to be dead. He was actually pretending to be dead so that he could escape from the clutches of the dentist, and while the audience already knew that at this point, it was a few more minutes before Marlin finds Nemo alive and well in a heartwarming scene.
- Three times, actually. Nemo looks like he might have died after getting caught in the fish net at the very end of the movie.
The Teachers Pet movie ends with the now-human Spot taking a blast from the villain's crumbling animal-transforming ray and being turned to dust. This upsets Leonard so much he kicks the machine, causing it to give one more zap that restores Spot to his canine form.
Disney has recently started doing this in the midquels to its own movies, at least twice (The Little Mermaid III and Bambi II). It's hard to get involved in The Great Prince mourning Bambi's demise when the first movie reveals that Bambi grows up happily to have fawns of his own.
More Robot Disney Death in Meet The Robinsons (2007): Doris skewers Carl through the chest, leaving him splayed across the grass, showering sparks. The next morning, he's good as new. No explanation. No "Hey, Carl! You're okay!" Huh.
- Granted, Doris was erased from history before Carl is seen to be okay. Still doesn't explain how the dinosaur is still around the house...
Clever variation in WALL-E. The title character is almost crushed to bits in the climax, but EVE knows how to fix him; the real tension is that once she has, he doesn't remember anything about the 700 years of his life, including her. His acquired sentience appears lost. *sniff* He then gets it back a few minutes later... only after she "kisses" him, of course.
Played with in Toy Story 2 when Zurg falls off the elevator shaft then comes back alive moments later.
In Mulan 2, Shang takes a terrible fall and everyone believes he is dead, but he turns out to be just fine. One of the tracks on the film's soundtrack is even called "Shang Lives."
In Lilo and Stitch 2: Stitch Gets a Glitch, Stitch dies because of his body being unstable. He gets better. The movie even admits that this is technically impossible.

Close Films — Animation

Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey (1993, live-action) actually has not one, but two Disney Deaths. First, Sassy the cat goes over a waterfall and is presumed dead; she is found by a kindly human and nursed back to health. Second, at the end, the old golden retriever Shadow falls into a ditch and tells the others to go on without him. They make it back to their owners without Shadow, and everyone assumes he's dead, but guess who then comes over the ridge? (In slow motion, of course...)
- Ironically, Shadow's voice actor died nine months after the movie was released.
- And in the sequel, Chance appears to be run over by a truck, but is then shown to have ducked just in the nick of time.
Flubber (1997, live-action). Weebo is smashed but fortunately, to go with the happily-ever-after ending, the professor manages to build a "daughter" robot based on designs that Weebo herself put together and informed him of in her dying moments.
- Still, the movie doesn't entirely play the trope straight, as the professor makes it clear that Weebo's personality is lost forever, and the daughter robot has a completely different (and somewhat annoying) personality to the original.
Aslan's death and resurrection could qualify in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe'' (2005, live-action), though admittedly this is taken directly from the source material. More bothersome is another line invented for the movie — where the White Witch tells Edmund that he will get to watch the fox "DIE!" when she strikes him with her wand, even though the wand was only ever capable of turning beings into stone, not killing them, and the Witch knows this. The only reason for this line is to create another Disney Death — and indeed, the Fox is later shown to be just fine.
- Aslan's resurrection is the entire point, as he's not an ordinary talking lion. The fox is an ordinary talking fox though; the White Witch might have just been lying to Edmund for the hell of it.
- C.S Lewis used this story to parallel biblical themes; as such Aslan throughout the series is likened to Jesus Christ who died and was resurrected. This puts Aslan's return out of Disney Death as it is based on other source material.
  - As for the fox, maybe the witch thought turning it to stone really was killing it. I mean, it's not like she knows everything.
In the lame movie version of Underdog, Underdog/Shoeshine flies so high that he ends up in space, falling down and catching fire like a comet and crash-landing on Earth, only to wake up a moment later. This is by far one of the stupidest Disney deaths of all time.

Close Films — Live Action

In Kingdom Hearts II, Goofy is believed to have given his life to save Mickey from a falling rock, but since this is partly a Disney property, it later turns out he's okay (though not before Sora and company tear their way through an army of Heartless). The same game actually features the Disney Death as an ability in the actual gameplay — Donald and Goofy, being cartoon characters, can never be killed in battle, but rather are just "knocked out" temporarily. Sora, however, is still a human being — if he dies, it's Game Over.
- That's not because they're Disney characters, that's because they're party members. You do get a non-Disney human in your party at one point in Kingdom Hearts II, and it happens to him too.
  - Well, the fellow in question happens to be a Badass ghost... which gives him two reasons he'd be hard to kill permanently.
  - And what about the party member in the last world?
  - Easy: Determinator. Not to mention he's a Disney character too.
- Sora gets one in the original Kingdom Hearts, where it's blended with a Heroic Sacrifice.
- And what about the chance of King Mickey taking over and reviving Sora instead of Game Over?

Close Video Games

Disney Deaths also sometimes come up in the company's TV shows as well. The Darkwing Duck episode "Dead Duck", in which Darkwing seemingly dies when he crashes through a brick wall, stretches this trope out to the whole episode's plot. It then turns out at the end that it was All Just A Dream.
- And prior to that, there's the climax of the pilot, which is not only a Disney Death for Darkwing, but also, as later revealed in the second season, the episode's villain, Taurus Bulba.
Near the end of the final episode of Teamo Supremo, the Gauntlet throws a statue on Teamo, seemingly crushing them, but then Crandall lifts up the statue a few seconds later.
Kim Possible briefly experiences this by being turned to stone in the Post Script Season episode "Oh No! Yono!" (Incidentally, at the end of that same episode, recurring villain Monkey Fist got Killed Off For Real.)
- She later seemingly gets blasted by a laser cannon in the Grand Finale, causing her archenemy to mourn her with these words: "You were a worthy foe. You were indeed all that. Farewell, Kim Possible." To which she responds, "Hello, Drakken."
- Happens in the movie. From Kim's reaction to her kicking Shego into an electric building, and the fact that she was kicked into a falling electric building, you'd expect Shego to be dead, especially after the building falls on her. However, she is perfectly fine later, and holds no grudge against Kim Possible (though, she tried to keep away from her in the first few episodes of the new seasons).
Phineas and Ferb go through this after being stepped on by a giant Author Avatar of Buford in the episode "Gaming the System"; the scene in question is pictured above. Of course, since they were inside a video game, they merely lost one of their five lives.
Even actual historical figures are not immune to the Disney Death. Even as a child, this troper knew that railman Casey Jones died in the massive railroad crash that made his name a legend. Yet somehow in Disney's animated version of the story, Casey managed to survive the crash.
In the episode "Future Tense" of television series "Gargoyles", almost the entire cast is slain in a struggle against a deranged Lexington and his Xanatos program. The events are ultimately revealed to be part of a dream sequence (or prophesy) experienced by the protagonist, Goliath.
- Numerous other episodes in the series, including the season 3 finale "Hunter's Moon", showcase other seeming deaths (or near-deaths) of primary characters.
In the Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go Season 2 finale, Antauri dies, much to Chiro's sorrow. By the time we start Season 3, he comes back as the silver monkey.

Close TV Shows — Animation

Disney itself wasn't always stuck on this syndrome. Bambi and Old Yeller are two Disney movies that stayed more or less faithful to the books from which they were made, and dead does mean dead. Especially when it comes time to Shoot The Dog. Reportedly, it was backlash from Media Watchdogs over the death in Bambi that pushed Walt to change the finality of Trusty's death at the last minute.
- According to her autobiography, Miss Peggy Lee, it was Peggy Lee (one of the movie's stars and the main musical contributor) who convinced them to let Trusty live.
Another nice exception: The Lion King. Pulling a Disney Death wouldn't make sense in a movie about the cycle of life and death (not to mention inspired by Hamlet, which is about avenging death); as a result, Mufasa gets killed in a massive stampede near the middle of the film, and when he dies, he dies for real.
- Well, the movie is "Bambi in Africa with Hamlet and Elton John music" (how the production crew called it) anyways. Just ignore the Elton John part. He has nothing to do with this anyway.
- Arguably the fact that Mufasa's conscious spirit still exists (though this, too, is consistent with Hamlet) numbs the viewer slightly to his death. Does that make it less than a subversion, I can't say for sure.
  - Keep in mind how it's handled, though. The spirit doesn't arrive to tell Simba, "Hey I'm still here in some form" in the horrific scene where the cub is examining the corpse and realising it's dead, but rather, arrives to tell Simba he has unfinished business after he becomes an adult, sees his reflection, and is motivated to vengeance by his memories. The real message here is that some sort of afterlife indisputably exists in the form of memories by peers, and it can drive people to action.
A fairly recent subversion: Tarzan (1999). Not only does Clayton accidentally hang himself in the finale, when Kerchack is shot, he lives for just long enough to apologize, name Tarzan his successor, and call him "son".
The seldom-seen Disney short John Henry stays true to the original legend by having the titular character work himself to death.
The short The Little Match Girl (Yes, that Little Match Girl), stays true to the original story by having the aformentioned match girl freeze to death. It's even more heart wretching when you think they pulled off this trope, but it's the soul of her grandmother taking her with her.
The Princess And The Frog. Ray gets Killed Off For Real. But, he gets to be with his beloved Evangeline afterwards, so he's fine.
To save time; the common rule of Disney films is only the villain(s) and parent(s) are allowed to die.

Close Films — Animation

Mai-HiME pulls off over a dozen Disney Deaths in one fell swoop.
Basara Nekki actually DOES die near the end of Macross 7, but comes back to life through the Power Of Rock because the Big Bad, in his words, "Needs to listen to my song!"
Possibly the cheapest example ever was from Witch Hunter Robin. About halfway through the series, an episode ended with a cliffhanger: all but two of the main characters were gunned down, on camera, by the bad guys. In the next episode, it is revealed that the "killers" were using nonlethal weapons, and the only consequence is that one guy is on crutches.
Naruto does this ~~occasionally~~ frequently, starting with Sasuke early on in the series; also during the "Retrieve Sasuke" arc, where several of Naruto's teammates each got a prolonged, heavily dramatized "death" scene from which they all eventually recovered and in Shippuden, where Gaara dies a drawn-out painful death, is dead for a while, and then is resurrected at the cost of the life of someone much older than him. Then later when Pain kills Shizune, Fukasaku, Kakashi, and an unknown number of villagers but brings them back in an act of Redemption Equals Death.
- By far the worst example in ~~fiction~~ Naruto would have to be Hinata. Pain "killed" her to provoke Naruto. It was later revealed that he didn't kill her and that she was still alive. There is literally no reason for this have happened whatsoever. Pain had already shown a willingness to kill, and was standing literally right over her and presumably possessed enough knowledge of Human anatomy to locate the heart, being a guy that kills people for a living and all and had no reason to keep her alive and every reason to kill her. And it's not like he didn't immediately turn around and revive everyone in the village that he had just killed.
Played for laughs in the Galaxy Angel anime, where more than once, characters are killed off and restored at least by the next episode; the first instance of this had the ditzy and gullible character in question honestly convinced that she was dead.
Neon Genesis Evangelion contains a subversion when Rei appears to die fighting the sixteenth Angel, but then turns up alive. It is later revealed that she did die, and was replaced by another clone. The fact that the members of the cast who don't know about this can't tell the difference is quite disturbing.
Both Saber Marionette J and, more blatantly, Saber Marionette J Again appear to kill off characters in the finale only to have them show up in the last minutes, just fine, with no real explanation for how they survived.
Elfen Lied (sort of): in the last episode, Lucy apparently gets killed in a Bolivian Army Ending; however, if you sit through all the ending credits, you can see a silhouette standing in a doorway that looks a bit too much like Nyu.
Vandread's second season: Gascogne rams a Harvester in a Heroic Sacrifice and her ship explodes. The characters angst over it for a full episode, then move on. However, several episodes later, it's revealed Gascogne not only survived but took control of the damaged Harvester. She then... doesn't do anything particularly special for the last two episodes, which even removes the excuse of "we needed her/the Harvester to win the final battle". It did give Barnette an excuse to wear her skimpier outfit again, but that's incidental.
Ryoko apparently dies near the end of Tenchi Universe, succumbing to wounds caused by the villain Kagato an episode prior and more that she incurred while flying Tenchi to Kagato's palace for the final battle. She appears in the final episode near the end in front of Tenchi, who has been pining about life returning to normality. All the other characters are implied to have returned to Tenchi as well.
- Given that the final sequence is a replay of the opening sequence up to Ryoko's appearance, it may even be a reboot of reality.
Many characters are apparently killed in One Piece, only to reappear alive-but-in-bandages at the end of the arc, having mysteriously survived. An ongoing joke people say is that "nobody dies in One Piece unless it's in a flashback." Just about the only characters who don't escape death are the family members of the main characters...
- Bandages heal EVERYTHING!
In Pokémon: The Rise of Darkrai, Darkrai sacrifices himself to prevent the ruin of the city. At the end of the show, he's even given a Really Dead Montage, yet is still shown to have come back at the last second.
- This troper suspects Darkrai was restored when Palkia restored the city, given that he disinigrated the same way the city was.
Ash dies in Pokémon: The First Movie, only to be resurrected by Pokémon tears. Or So I Heard.
- It's much, much more Disney-ish than that — he jumps between the Worf Barrage attacks of Mew and Mew-Two and is turned to stone. This heroic sacrifice instantly convinces an entire football stadium of warring Pokémon to instantly stop fighting (which all the other characters have spent the last twelve hours re-iterating is A Bad Thing) and weep bitter glittering tears for their fallen hero — who, up until this point, has had almost nothing to do with them. These glittering tears restore him to life with no negative side effects. That's right. If you cry hard enough, you can bring people back to life.
- Amber said that Pokémon tears are full of life soon before she died... so, this is an aversion.
  - That part was only in the dub. In the original, the resurrection was completely out of left field.
  - Though, in the series, tears have been shown fairly consistently to have magical/spiritual qualities in general...
- Ash dies in EP 35, but just goes back to his body, as the whole episode basically was a "Hey, being a ghost is pretty kickass. Also screwing with Misty's emotions is funny!"
  - Since he was pulled out of his body by Haunter (rather than parting with it spontaneously), it was arguably more a form of astral projection than death.
- He also arguably drowns in the ninth movie, Pokémon Ranger and the Temple of the Sea, but gets some unspecified kickass power and subsquently destroys the Bad Guy.
  - Said unspecified kickass power (flight, more or less) was apparently just a feature of the intact "Temple of the Sea," as the whole cast is shown zipping 'round the Temple afterwards.
A particularly annoying example in Last Exile: during an assault to capture the Guild's Claudia Units, which keep Anatoray and Disith's airships aloft, a character is shot and fatally wounded, and his ally/love interest's reaction is deliberately portrayed to mean that he has died (including a gut-wrenching scream.) Two episodes later, during the epilogue, he shows up perfectly fine, and playing with the love interest's younger sibling, with no explanation whatsoever.
- It's worth noting that when Tech TV aired the series, they cut most of the post-not-really-death scenes out, save for one random and even less explained shot of said character
Happens constantly in Bleach: if it's not a flashback and the character isn't a Hollow or random nameless mook, their apparent death scene will inevitably be nothing of the sort.
The Inu Yasha Manga has this in the episode with the Peachman. Inu-Yasha (while he is a regular human) and the Peachman are sent over a cliff. Seeing no sign of his body, his companions think that the Peachman must have flattened him. Inu-Yasha wakes up, having landed in a nearby tree, and he wakes up just as Kagome starts shouting how stupid he was (for dying).
The Wolkenritter of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, who all had dramatic, agonizing deaths that were reversed once Hayate came to power and restored them.
Most seasons of Digimon, except the Darker And Edgier third season do this with the Digimon, who don't die, they just get "reconfigured" and eventually re-incarnate. Although it's implied that most of the time, they forget most or all of the previous lives, although of course this doesn't happen to the important good guys. In the third season, Digimon DO die, including several important good guys, and they don't come back.
- There's also Wizardmon who dies in the first season. He appears as a ghost later, but doesn't actually come back to life.
  - Subverted in the fifth season. When Digimon are destroyed, they revert to Digi-eggs, but the show's Big Bad develops a way to destroy the resulting eggs with the Digimon, killing them permanently. Cue Digi-genocide.
  - There's also one more: After Masaru goes berserk and evolves ShineGreymon into Ruin Mode, Agumon reverts back into an egg. Masaru is told that although he is still alive, Agumon will have no recollection of him once he is reborn due to the misuse of the Burst Mode. However, once he hatches, he has no memory lapses whatsoever. Cue ass kicking new evolution.
In Sonic X, the Robot Disney Death is applied to Dr. Eggman's Mecha-Mooks Decoe and Bocoe in Episode 48. Somehow, 4Kids manages to Bowdlerize this into a plain Disney Death by removing the scene where the other characters are mourning them and saying that they "pulled themselves back together" rather than being repaired by Chuck Thorndyke.
In Kanon, both the 2002 and 2006 versions Yuichi remembers near the end of the series that Ayu fell off a high tree and presumably died seven years ago. However, by the very last scene of both versions, Ayu is shown to be alive after coming out of her coma, though the 2006 version ends with her in a wheelchair while she recovers.
- Of course, Makoto doesn't come back, although there's a suspiciously familiar fox in the background of the last shot.
- In Clannad, Nagisa actually dies, but by virtue of Ushio and the Light Orbs, Tomoya is sent back in time and prevents this.
In Gundam SEED Destiny, Kira Yamato gets stabbed through the cockpit of his Mobile Suit by one pissed-off Shinn Asuka. The Mobile Suit is more or less completely destroyed — Kira Yamato? He's fine, and shows up later to steal the spotlight away from the alleged main cast.
- The reason he was fine? He managed to turn off the Nuclear reactor that powered Freedom at the last minute.
The titular character of Nausicaa Of The Valley Of The Wind dies in an attempt to stop a stampede of giant insects from killing off her people. The insects stop their stampede shortly afterward, and restore her to life by using their golden feelers.
Several times in Code Geass R2. The show seems to be a series where Anyone Can Die and characters get Killed Off For Real, which does tend to happen, but a few others get what looks like a death scene and may somehow turn up fine episodes later, at most with a couple of bandages.
In the final episode of Nadia the Secret of Blue Water, the lead character, Jean, falls to his death on account of Gargoyle. After initially grieving over him, Nadia realizes she can revive him if she uses both her Blue Water and Nemo's... and that's just what she does.
- In that same episode, Nemo sacrifices himself to ensure everyone's escape. (This is actually a subversion.)
In the Gash Bell manga, Kiyomaro honest to goodness dies. But he is revived by the juice of Faudo, which seems to have that effect on people, and takes a level in badass, gaining Answer Talker eyes and a crapload of new spells.
An example from the Ranma ½ manga, but not the anime. Akane is turned into a doll after having all the water sucked from her body and her ability to come back to life is measured by how open the doll's eyes are. At the climax of the battle the doll's eyes close fully meaning Akane is dead, but Ranma's anguished declaration of love allows her to come back to life anyway.
- Another sort of example occurs in an earlier arc when Ryōga is throttled to death by a super-strong Giant Mook and is so depressed by what he sees in the afterlife he musters up the Heroic Resolve to come back to life.
  - Actually, he was pretty happy to go to the afterlife, until he saw a vision of Akane and Ranma's wedding, and decides he can't let such a thing happen.
In the anime of Fullmetal Alchemist, this is both proven and subverted. Practically over and over. First, Envy stabs Ed through the stomach, killing him in a delightfully bloody and dramatic manner. Afterward, Alphonse, being the Philosopher's Stone, sacrifices himself to pull Ed's soul back from the Gate and let him live. And then, of course, to fill the role of heroic sacrifice as he is required, Ed sacrifices himself to bring back Al, complete with his human body (instead of the armor), and Ed goes to live on the other side of the Gate (a.k.a. our world). They both end up living in the end—even when you swear they're both dead.
In Fresh Pretty Cure, Setsuna is killed by Cline after proving herself useless to Labyrinth one too many times, and Cure Peach and Chiffon use the Akarun to bring her back to life as Cure Passion.
- A similar situation happens in Splash Star, with the Kiryuu sisters, Michiru and Kaoru.
  - Hell, in the Pretty Cure franchise, it's so traditional to have at least one Disney Death for villains turned good that the only one to survive the process is Bunbee.
A few episodes before the season 2 finale of Kyo Kara Maoh, Wolfram gets the key in his heart ripped out by Shinou. This causes him to, well, die. At least, until the key is PUT BACK a day or two later.
Araruu's death in battle in Utawarerumono was so dramatic that it awakened a dormant super power in the amnesiac hero, which served as a Deus Ex Machina that allowed him to triumph against overwhelming odds. A lot of blood was lost by the little girl. Too much. She even went limp. Some confusing stuff happens and she is soon back to normal again without a scratch and no emotional traumas or scars from the incident. This Heroic Sacrifice was a Wall Banger for me.
In Darker Than Black, Huang's apparent Heroic Sacrifice seems to have no consequence. A few episodes later, he is back healthy as normal without explanation.
Katekyo Hitman Reborn does this in the very first chapter where protaganist Tsuna is told to "go die" by Reborn and then shot in the head. Tsuna lies motionless in the street for a page, then gets up again, full of energy and resolve. Only then do we learn that he was shot with a special "dying will bullet" which kills and instantly ressurects the victim, and in the process transforms the victim's final regrets into tremendous strength of will.
- Played more straight elsewhere; many battles throughout the series end with someone lying on the ground, presumably dead. They almost always end up spending several chapters in the hospital before making a full recovery. Note that this is usually what happens to the winner of the battle...
The robotic variant is rarely used in Astro Boy — generally, dead is dead, even for robots — but it does crop up occaisionally. In one episode of the 80s anime, three abandoned robots are instrumental in saving a space station in distress... but use all their remaining power and shut down. Since they're still intact, though, they're powered back up and fine by the end of the episode. In one storyline (This troper isn't sure of the which it's sourced from), Astro himself dies... but comes back — although, in something of a subversion, it's not easy, nor is he "good as new."

Close Anime & Manga

D.A.R.Y.L. (1985) features a classic Robot Disney Death as part of its climax/denouement.
In Lethal Weapon 2 (1989), 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.
Doc's survival of the Libyan terrorists in Back to the Future (1985) could certainly qualify (though this editor feels this is one of the more clever examples).
In Star Trek II and III, we have a large subversion: Spock dies for real, but his cells are regenerated on the Genesis planet, without his soul, and rapidly aging.
Ted appears to get run through by a sword in medieval England in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989), 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.)
Keanu Reeves again, this time as Neo in The Matrix (1999), seems to be dead at the climax until Trinity kisses him and he goes back into action.
- It's explicitly stated that he is dead; this is a resurrection.
In Terminator 2: Judgment Day, the T-800 robot is seemingly beaten then impaled by the T-1000, leaving Sarah and John Connor helpless. Then — ta-da! — his backup power source turns on, and he heads off to save the day. Though moments later he does die for real in the molten steel.
- And in the novel version, its instead he deliberately feigned death after the impaling, in order to give himself the chance of a suprise shot.
One of the most mind-boggling examples is in Hudson Hawk (1991), 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).
The titular robot in The Iron Giant (1999) is shown reassembling himself after a Heroic Sacrifice against an incoming nuclear missile. (A rare example of a good Robot Disney Death, meaning both that it is very satisfying to the audience and that it was set up properly — the Giant's self-repair ability was demonstrated earlier in the film.)
The American animated movie Titan A.E. (2000) hung a lampshade on this when the character Gune was "killed" by an explosion and claimed, as he passed out, that he "Must have nap...". Later he returned and saved the day proclaiming, "I finished my nap!"
In a particularly pointless version that removes the very last bit of pathos from the film, Snails in The Movie of 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. (To be fair, those focus groups were probably also folks who played the game, and even when playing by the rules it's fairly easy to get a character resurrected.)
- Unlikely. If they had any actual D&D players in the test screenings, there would have been a LOT more changes.
  - If they had actual D&D players review the film, there would have been fights to destroy every copy before release...
Alpha Centauri, the Trickster Mentor from The Last Starfighter (1984), appears to die heroically halfway through the movie, only to reappear with a Hand Wave at the end of the movie.
Diego, in Ice Age (2002), although when he "dies", he does assure the heroes he'll be all right. We don't believe him, naturally, but then he turns out to be all right at the end.
- I always thought that was a classic Disney Death too, until I realised that, since he doesn't look very hurt at ALL at the end, he had to be faking it. Why? If Manny and Sid were going to give the kid back to the humans, Diego couldn't be there: he's a sabre-toothed tiger and the one who stole the kid in the first place! He would have just gotten them attacked.
The George of the Jungle (1997) movie hangs a lampshade on it, plays the trope straight, and takes it to a blatantly over-the-top extreme bordering on Nigh Invulnerability. In one of the first scenes, for example, one of the guides falls at least 400 meters from a Rope Bridge over a cliff, at which point the Narrator reassures the audience: "Don't worry — nobody dies in this story. They just get really big boo-boos."
- Further lampshaded after George is shot; Lyle is a big doofus. Poor George was shot, but let's face it; he's the hero!
Mean Girls (2004) plays with this trope with the "just kidding" death of Regina, who gets much better after being run over by a bus.
It seems like anyone who falls off a cliff in the The Lord of the Rings movies (2001, 2002, 2003) is going to show up later (apart from Mooks, but since when have they counted?).
- 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 paralized.
- In The Two Towers, Samwise appears to fall to his death, but we are immediatly shown that he only fell a couple of feet into the fog.
- Also in The Two Towers, Aragorn is seen to fall over a multi-hundred foot cliff and all the charecters mourn, but it turns out he's completely uninjured, besides a little dizzyness and some scrapes.
The main character's son in the Spielberg version of 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.
Subverted/justified in Groundhog Day (1993). 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.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). Indy is on top of a tank that is sent flying over a cliff that no one could survive. Naturally everyone assumes Indy is dead, only to experience a touching moment when they realize he survived after all. Could be considered a parody/subversion since Indy seems more annoyed than touched.
In A Night on The Town/Adventures in Babysitting (1987) 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.
Used in 10,000 B.C., helped along by The Power Of Love, or something close to it.
In Star Wars: A New Hope (1977), R2-D2 is pretty much blown up in the final space battle, but at the end scene, he is shown to be all fixed up and shined up! This happens again in Return of the Jedi (1983) when he gets electrocuted, but at the celebration, he's working again. Of course, R2's a droid, but that raises questions about how well his memory is protected.
- Backups, obviously. :-)
- Also in Star Wars: A New Hope (1977), in the scene where Obi-Wan Kenobi finds Luke after the Tusken Raiders attacked him. The camera cuts to show C3-PO's detached arm on the ground, and for a few seconds the audience is led to think that Threepio has been destroyed. Watching in the theater during the first theatrical run, this troper heard audience members say "Awwwww..." as they first (mistakenly) conclude that Threepio has met his end.
The movie Short Circuit (1986) 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.
- On the other hand, in the sequel so cleverly named Short Circuit 2 (1988), Number Five (who insisted in this movie to be 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 Magic 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.
Subverted amusingly in the movie 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.
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.
How the hell do we not have E.T. (1982) here yet? It's even foreshadowed with the kids' mom reading Gertie the Clap Your Hands If You Believe scene from Peter Pan.
- See also the climax of the infamous ripoff Mac And Me (1988). 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.
Toward the end of Crocodile Dundee II (1988) 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.
The ending of Mission Impossible 3 seemed to be a Disney Death to this troper, since while watching the nearly-the-ending death I was just waiting for the dead guy to get back up. Despite the electro-shock therapy that killed him, and the fact that CPR didn't work.
In The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, SpongeBob and Patrick are dried up to death in the Shell City gift shop and then revived a minute later when the sprinkler system goes off.
- If you didn't cry during that one, you're a monster.
In Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, after the explosion of their helicopter, Kadaj throws to Rufus the bloodstained ID badges of Tseng and Elena. Later, they catch him in a net after he jumps off a building, thus averting his death as well.
- To be fair, Vincent mentions that he found them horribly tortured and healed them the best he could, even if he didn't know it was enough.
- Also, Cloud, shot by Loz at the climax of the movie. This Troper's mother came in on the scene of him hanging suspended in endless whiteness and dully asked, 'is he dead?'
- From the dialogue between Reno and Rude before they set off a bomb in order to kill Loz and Yazoo, it makes it sound like they aren't going to be coming out of this one alive. But yet all four of them seem to survive the blast, Reno and Rude are seen at the end with the rest of the Turks, whilst Loz and Yazoo go off to get Cloud. The latter pair however, don't survive Aerith's Great Gospel/Lifestream Water/Magical Rain.
- And then there's Rufus, who turns up alive in the movie after being last seen in the game getting blown up real good. Particularly irritating is that Cloud rather rudely shuts up his explanation of how he survived, the one piece of exposition in the film that fans of the game were actually interested in.
In The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Sawyer apparently dies helping prevent the destruction of Venice, but it turns out he didn't somehow.
Played with in the Spanish animated film Nocturna. The Cat Shepard appears to die after fending off the evil shadow, and Tim accepts his death by saying he'll always live on in his heart. Right before the end of the movie, we see a herd of cats run by, with the Cat Shepard's familiar legs and gait among them. Tim doesn't, though.
An alternate version of Rock and Rule has Zip survive his self-sacrifice to save Omar from the demon.
Fly gets one of these in Help! I'm a Fish!
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 that much."
Don't forget Rent! In both the musical and the movie, Mimi apparently dies at the end after living on the streets for a long time, but after Roger uses the Power of Love/the Power of Rock, she suddenly comes back to life again, her fever broken and not delirious anymore. Subverted with Angel's actual death. In the opera La Boheme, which Rent was based on, Mimi actually did die from tuberculosis, although Schaunard/Angel did not die at all.
In The Boat That Rocked (2009), 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.
At the end of Little Nemo in Slumberland, Nemo takes a rather big fall while defeating the Nightmare King, and dies. Or, not.
This happened twice to the heroine of the Swan Princess films. The first film had her saved by a declaration of love from her prince. The third had Odette vaporized by a bolt of black magic. When her now-husband prince burns the copy of the spell that summoned it, she materializes from the fire — and no, he didn't know that would happen. Also, the Talking Animal frog Jean-Bob got knocked out at the climax of II and brought back as a side effect of the spell that turned Odette into a swan and back. This troper doesn't get it either.
- The first film also averted this trope rather surprisingly: after a very long opening number which establishes the relationships between all of the major players (not only the love/hate relationship of Odette and Derek, but the extremely close friendship of King William and Queen Uberta), King William is abruptly Killed Off For Real. This seems to have no repercussions on any of the other characters.
In the 1999 animated version of The King and I, this happens to the King after his hot air balloon goes down. And if you're asking what the heck a hot air balloon has to do with The King and I, you obviously haven't seen a film that takes They Just Didnt Care and the Animation Age Ghetto to a whole new level.
The Mummy''s Oded Fehr pulls a You Shall Not Pass on an army of mummies. Cut to the end and he's alive somehow.
Danny from Hot Fuzz gets shot and is caught in an explosion but comes back alive to put flowers on his mother's grave.
Played with in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang when Gay Perry stays alive after getting shot.
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.
- Prime gets his own Robot Disney Death too, as did Megatron in the first movie.
Astro in the 2009 Astro Boy film - twice! The first time, Dr. Tenma removes his Blue Core, but has a change of heart in time to revive him, acknowledge him as his son, and allow him to escape at Tenma's own risk in the movie's Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming. The second time, Astro pulls a Heroic Sacrifice to defeat Peacekeeper, only to be revived by Zog.
- This is arguable, since we don't know how long Astro can go without his Blue Core before being permanently dead.

Close Films

In the Discworld novel Moving Pictures, Gaspode the Wonder Dog apparently makes a Heroic Sacrifice to save the Disc from the Things from the Dungeon Dimensions. In the first draft he was Killed Off For Real, but this was rewritten following reader feedback, and Gaspode went on to become a recurring character.
- And, given the theme of the book, and the method used to revive Gaspode... possible Lampshade?
The death (and rebirth) of Aslan in the The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
- Which is, in fact, based on Jesus in The Bible.
  - At least Jesus foreshadowed his death and resurrection in metaphors; to the point that it lacks suspense to a first time reader, actually.
  - It wasn't meant to be suspenseful, Poindexter.
In The Night Land, after the hero has been through hell and back to bring his beloved home, and despite the best efforts of the Redoubt's finest doctors, she dies anyway and has a tremendous funeral attended by the entire human race. Then she comes back to life without explanation.
In Voltaire's Candide, roughly every few pages a character is "brought back to life".
- Lampshaded in the musical version with the song "You Were Dead, You Know."
In The Lord of the Rings, Frodo is stabbed by an Orc and stung by Shelob, appearing dead both times, but is saved by his mithril armor and Shelob using paralytic poison instead of a fatal one, respectively. Gandalf dies from his exertions after killing the Balrog, but is sent back by the Valar to finish his task. Makes you wonder why Peter Jackson decided he needed to send Aragorn off a cliff...
- Because he failed his ride check, of course.
- Or why Peter Jackson needed to turn that stabbed by a cave troll thing into such a big incident, when Frodo had already been stabbed by the Witch King an hour earlier. The cave troll bit gets drawn out as long as possible, complete with Frodo gasping for breath and moaning in spite of the fact that he's not hurt.
  - Because he's The Woobie. Why else does anything happen to Frodo? Besides, even if he wasn't impaled, its not unreasonable for him to get winded and bruised from the force of the blow.
Valashu in the Ea Cycle narrates his own Disney Death in first person. He falls into afterlife for half a page or so and then gets promptly resurrected. After all, he couldn't very well write about his adventures if he remained dead.
In the Wheel of Time series, the climactic battle with Rahvin resulted in the death of some major characters. Rand proceeded to use really powerful balefire to kill Rahvin, which killed him irrevocably and had the convenient effect of undoing everything the villain did in the last hour or so. Everybody's okay!
Ingeniously used in the Dragonlance novel Lord Toede by Jeff Grubb. Grubb was asked to write a novel starring Toede, a minor comic villain in the main series who was killed "off-screen" by a dragon. Grubb created a plot between two demons in the afterlife wagering over whether someone as vile as Toede could live nobly — so they restored to life. Then he died again, so they decided to make it best of three, then best of five and so on. Toede (who in style and personality strongly resembles Blackadder, complete with his own Baldrick figure) eventually got his revenge....
In Robert Aspirin's Myth Adventures series, it was almost a Running Gag to have a character (usually Aahz) appear to be dead/gone and then reappear later as a surprise...
A Song of Ice and Fire manages to *combine* this with being a series where Anyone Can Die. Multiple chapters end with a POV character seemingly "dying"... Only for a later chapter to reveal that they survived. Combined with the fact that lots of people really DO die, this has spawned a ludicrous number of Epileptic Trees.
The Lions of Al Rassan wrings every possible bit of suspense, drama and angst out of Diego Belmonte's death... then Ishak the legendary doctor appears and "wishes to examine the boy".
Jurassic Park ends with Ian Malcolm apparently dead, even referring to the difficulty the others are having in getting his body sent back to America for burial... But in The Lost World we learn that he survived.
In Mossflower the big final duel ends with it looking likeMartin is dead since he's covered in blood as well as hundreds of cuts from Tsarmina's claws. But he's just in a coma and is healed up by the last chapter.

Close Literature

Consider Star Trek's "Amok Time", followed later with "The Enterprise Incident". The latter was partially subverted when Kirk returns from the apparent dead to fool the Romulans, and Dr. McCoy notes that he was lucky that the Romulans didn't perform an autopsy on him, thus killing him for real.
A good Mutant Enemy example is Lorne's head on Angel 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 (which would have been a massive plot hole if they had; most of that entire dimension is populated by that race)—the Groosalugg, knowing Lorne was Cordelia's friend, switched his body with a soldier.
In an episode of Sliders (1996), 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 of Disney Death, the characters land in a world run by the Russians and help the Resistance in one of their operations. During the pull out though the female protagonist is shot and mortally wounded. The main characters start to grieve for her till she suddenly appears right behind them alive and well. Turns out it was her universal counterpart that got killed not her.
Lost's "All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues" used a very cheap Disney Death, when Charlie was found strung up by the neck, not breathing, and with no pulse, but after a particularly protracted CPR session, Jack was able to revive him. Some fans decided to blame the unlikely event on the possibly magic island (similar to A Wizard Did It). Shannon suffered a similar death scene in "Hearts and Minds", but the sequence was shown to have been a hallucination suffered by her brother Boone under the influence of an unnamed drug prepared and administered without his knowledge by Locke.
- Locke isn't immune to this either, seeing that one cliffhanger from season four is his body in a coffin, but then he's alive and well in season 5 — at least since the episode The life and death of Jeremy Bentham.
  - One could argue that the same thing happens with Jin, but not to the same degree since we do get to see flash forwards of him alive and well.
  - This has happened to Locke multiple times, at the end of season 3 for another reason when he gets shot and thrown into a hole full of bodies...or was it knifed, this troper can't remember, but either way he shows up in the season 4 premiere absolutely fine
  - That wouldn't be so bad, but then they handwave it by saying it's because the injury location was where his stolen kidney would have been, and if he'd still had that kidney, he would have died
  - Possibly subverted with Locke in season five, however, when you find out Locke's been dead the whole time, something else has taken the form of his body and has been pulling off a massive Batman Gambit.
The robot version happened to K-9 in the "School Reunion" episode of Doctor Who, 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.
- Also in the Doctor Who original series episode "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 umberella 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.
  - According to fan legend, this was supposed to be justified later on. The Doctor went back in time LATER and put the rubbish there, including a comfy couch to land on. This is why he's disgusted with himself instead of relieved when he's dug out — it's another case of him cheating using time travel like in "Battlefield." Of course, the series didn't get another season to finish that plot arc.
Power Rangers Lost Galaxy: Kendrix’s reappearance at the end may or may not be permanent - she had appeared as a Spirit Advisor since her death, but only in the finale did she lose transparency/glowiness. (However, solid ghosts have been seen in the show on occasion, and the teamup, in which she is functioning as a Ranger and her replacement was not seen or mentioned, was originally not in continuity and clashes with the series on several points. There's equal room for her to be dead, alive, or somewhere in between.)
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.
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.
Ashes To Ashes 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".
Buffy The Vampire Slayer 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 that this troper can think of.
- 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 the Season 1 finale, when Buffy drowns... only to be brought back to life by Xander's CPR.
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 even then 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.
- Except that Arthur Petrelli totally killed Adam.
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.
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.
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 was Killed Off For Real in the second season finale.)
Ths troper was shocked to see one of these 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. I was shocked 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.
ADA Alexandra Cabot from Law And 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.
In the episode Doppleganger 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.
Used twice (well, almost) in the third-season finale of Blackadder. 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 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.

Close Live Action TV

One of the nastier Disney Deaths (due to its reason for being one) happens near the end of Michael Jackson's Ghosts. His hero Maestro asks the mob of kids and grown-ups (the latter wanted to run him out of town) if they still want him to leave; while only the evil mayor does, Maestro agrees to go and smashes himself into the floor, crumbling into dust before the horrified crowd's eyes, reducing one of the boys to tears. The mayor is happy to be rid of him, and makes to leave, but then the Maestro (in his ghoul form) appears as a giant face in the doorway, and the mayor runs away screaming, smashing through a window. Turns out Maestro just wanted to scare everybody, and the crowd is happy...except for viewers who realize the Fridge Logic that the mayor might be actually be dead or at least horribly injured, and that the hero traumatized everybody just to trick one person who (by that point) had a darn good reason for wanting him out of town — he'd been the victim of magical torture by the Maestro.

Close Music Video

The Bible Jesus Christ. (Come on! If you really think about it, the whole Easter story is a Disney Death.)
- Best. Spoiler Tags. EVER.
  - Given that it's been twenty centuries since this work was written, this troper believes the spoiler tags are unwarranted.
After Ragnarok. The world is devastated and everyone is dead. Wait, there are survivors?...

Close Mythology

Near the end of Star Fox Assault, quite a few Disney Deaths ensue in the build-up to the final battle.
In Super Mario Sunshine, the robot pump FLUDD is seemingly destroyed in the final battle, and guess what? He comes back.
A largely ignored Robot Disney occurs in Final Fantasy VII. Talking Animal Cait Sith agrees to remain inside the Temple of the Ancients, 'solving puzzles' to make it shrink so it can be picked up and taken by the characters — naturally, this means anyone inside will be crushed. But Cait Sith is actually a robot, with a backup copy lurking nearby in case of disaster, which was why he agreed so readily (although his pre-death speech suggests he is genuinely able to feel sad about dying, even knowing a duplicate will come along). The temple shrinks, Cait is crushed, and 'Cait Sith Number Two' approaches, identical to the first - and naturally arrives at the worst possible time. It's been theorized that the game does this to increase the shock of the death of another main character later on. Note that this copy is not only at the same level as the one that just died, but also has all of his equipment, which is completely impossible.
- Completely impossible? When nearly all the armors and weapons can be found readily in stores? You may have a point about the materia, but presumably they removed it from him before he went in.
  - Wait you gave gear to Cait Sith?
- Final Fantasy IV, known for having not just one but many, many Plotline Deaths, also has a few Disney Deaths. Cid is given one when he leaps off of the airship and detonates a bomb in order to let the rest of the party escape from pursuers-you later find him, not just alive but in good enough shape to upgrade the airship. Yang also has one when the Tower of Babil explodes-he seems dead, but if you go down into one of the underworld dungeons, he's alive but comatose and being tended by Sylphs. You can, of course, wake him up from his coma by hitting him in the face with a frying pan.
  - In fact, despite the large number of Plotline Deaths, only two characters are ever Killed Off For Real. Many of the others don't rejoin the party, but even the pair that gets turned to stone makes an appearance by the end.
In Shadow Of The Colossus, the protagonist's faithful steed apparently falls to its death when a bridge gives out, only to return during the ending alive.
Subverted in the first Disgaea, when the robot Thursday is saved by the ghost the main characters have put to rest... only to be immediately broken again by Flonne.
- Later, just before the Final Boss, Flonne is turned into a flower by Seraph Lamington for what appears to be an incredibly stupid reason. In some of the Multiple Endings, this death is for real; in others, it turns out to be a Disney Death.
In the Infocom text adventure game Planetfall, the cleaning robot Floyd 'dies' heroically sacrificing his life to obtain an essential keycard, complete with an eulogy given by the PC. At the end of the game he reappears, repaired.
- Of course, in the next game, he becomes Brainwashed And Crazy and you have to kill him for real.
Parodied in the Infocom text adventure game The Leather Goddesses of Phobos, in which your sidekick Tiffany (or Trent, depending on your character's gender) heroically sacrifices themselves about half a dozen times to help you out, complete with a silent moment of loss and mourning on your part, before they turn up again in the very next area, having survived through increasingly implausible coincidence.
Geist does this twice with the same character. The first time, he is swallowed whole by a boss monster, then escapes from its stomach when you kill the boss monster, causing it to burst open. The second time, his helicopter is shot down, but he appears at the end of the game with no explanation of how he survived.
In Tales of Symphonia, this happens to your entire party at one point. They all supposedly sacrifice themselves to allow Lloyd to get to Colette, but either Zelos or Kratos shows up to save each and every one of them
Played for laughs in Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. On Keelhaul Key, Admiral Bobbery is assaulted by some of the local spirits and appears to be on his last, stubby little legs. Barely clinging to consciousness, he begs you to fetch the Chuckola Cola he brought along with him, to drink in honor of his late wife. After Bobbery chugs to Scarlett's memory, he promptly... starts snoring. Your partner, realizing he was confused and overdramatic at worst, encourages you to give him a sound whack on the head to rouse him. He goes from asleep to fighting stance in .7 seconds flat.
- This also pops up in the post-game in a more serious fashion, where it turns out that TEC survives having his hard drive deleted and then blowing up, and Grodus survives having his head and body destroyed separately. No clue how on either one of those.
  - When talking to TEC after beating the final boss, he mentions that he saw a bright light and heared Princess Peach's voice before being resurrected. It is possible that Peach, while breaking temorarily free from the Shadow Queen's grasp to send Mario her power, also uses a portion of her power to save TEC. This is actually what many fans believe. No clue about the other one, though. Another Disney Death case is Lord Crump who is literally blown into space.
- Super Paper Mario does this a lot, namely with Peach, Bowser, Luigi, Luvbi and Nastasia.
Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time and Darkness end with the hero character being knocked out of the time line when s/he changes the future (yep, the main character is from the future). However, this is uncharacteristic for a children's game, so after your parter cries his or her heart out to Bidoof before the end credits, Dialga decides to grant you partner his or her greatest desire - which is, of course, the revival of your character. It's not like you could reach the postgame content if you were dead, huh?
Surprisingly averted in Super Robot Wars. A character rarely dies without much fanfare and usually gives a protracted speech before death, or at least everone else remarks about said death. Otherwise, the character simply retreated. In some cases, doomed characters can be saved from their fate (and sometimes brought over to the player's side) by a set of specific actions, some quite byzantine.
- Not to mention the bit where they tend to avert character deaths of popular or important characters, especially Gai Daigouji from Martian Successor Nadesico... though then there's poor Schwartz Bruder from G Gundam, who rarely gets to live.
The ending from the first Grandia.
After the fight against the final boss of Golden Sun : The Lost Age, it is revealed that this monster was in fact created from the parents of some playable characters (the father of Isaac, and the parents of Jenna and Felix), whom they thought already dead. By defeating the boss, they also killed their parents. However, they are alive and well during the last minutes of gameplay, with only a cheap explanation (the Psynergy of Mars Lighthouse is supposed to have revived them) as to why they are not dead.
- Cheap explanation? Not so much. Saturos and Menardi set this up way back in the first game by using the Venus beacon to bring themselves back from the brink of death. It still counts, though, because nobody but the Wise One realized it would work.
Played straight in Mass Effect, while still managing to be a Crowning Moment Of Awesome for the victim. The group, having just defeated Sovereign, is fleeing from an incoming chunk of Reaper. Cut to the two party members with you, as a C-Sec officer and Anderson pry open one of the chunks that was a near-miss to reveal them. Anderson asks where Shepard is, they shake their heads, and all parties involved get a crushed expression - cut to the side, where you see a form moving toward the group through the wreckage. Swell of music, Shepard mounting the top of the biggest chunk, with a huge "I just punched out Cthulhu" grin on his face. Cut to final sequence.
Kirby Super Star Ultra not only manages to retcon Marx's death into this trope but also uses it as the explanation for his power boost in the True Arena (What's left of Nova merge with him.). And then he dies for good.
Sonic has demonstrated the best and the worst aspects of this trope. His first apparent death combined at least two different crowning moments for both himself and the supporting cast, while the second involved bestiality and the The Power Of Love. The games? Sonic Adventure 2 and, you guessed it, Sonic 06.
Any time Zero gets blown to pieces. Don't expect it to last long. Then he actually does die for good at the end of Megaman Zero 4.
- Speaking of Megaman, in Star Force 3, Luna gets blown up and the next part of the game is focused on bringing her out of this state. It's played around with since the last entity that was fixed is completely devoid of personality, implying that or something worse might be Luna's fate. Of course, Luna makes a full recovery and is back to her campaign in the very next portion of the game.
  - The credits show that Ace is also alive and well, despite the whole self-destruct thing.
Played straight and adverted in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Played straight when the aprentice get's thrown out the window of a star destroyer and when something similar happens to Rham Kota (sic) and adverted with PROXY and the actual death of The Apprentice
Done in Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals. Dekar, the world's strongest man, has an entire temple dropped on him, with a miniboss holding him with magic so he can't get away. He eats it, and comes back in the end, clearing a path for your dirigible to reach Doom Island.
- And then subverted in the ending, which hit especially hard if you hadn't played the first Lufia.
  - Are you kidding? I played Lufia 1 and STILL bawled my eyes out when the ending of 2 hit... and then even more when the ending didn't just let Maxim lie there and die with Selan - he then had to go and burn every last bit of strength he had left to stop the Sinistrals' last revenge. The revelation that Erim had been starting to de-evilfy even before her amnesic days as Lufia in the first game added to the emotional impact of the scene. THEN there's the epilogue with Arty's blindness and Tia's crying. God, but if this wasn't the most emotionally wracking endings ever.
In Snatcher, Metal Gear uses himself as a target for a Kill Sat beam. He comes back, but in the form of whatever console the version of the game you're playing is on.
The Jumi arc in Legend Of Mana. In spades. You don't find out until the very end, though, by which point they've invoked the sister trope Our Hero Is Dead. It's Player Punch-eriffic!
The MassMouth 2 Game Mod for Doom gleefully parodies this trope, with nearly every major character returning to life at least once. Lampshaded in one boss fight:
Linguica: You fag! I'll kill you for killing me!
MassMouth: Why doesn't anybody stay dead around here?
Albert Wesker gets impaled and apparently dies on-screen in the first Resident Evil, yet continues to operate from the shadows in later games. The on-screen death is sort-of retconned in the GameCube version, but only after Resident Evil - Code: Veronica was released.
- Ada Wong also dies in both of her scenarios of Resident Evil 2. She lives on to be one of the driving forces behind Resident Evil 4.
The Legend Of Zelda series does this a few times. In A Link to The Past Link's uncle gives a speech about his and Link's time together before he passes out. During the end credits it shows that he's alive and well in the house.
- Well, Link had just been granted unlimited wishes by the Triforce, and bringing his uncle back from the dead wouldn't be a surprising choice for one of them.
- Let's not forget Midna in Twilight Princess.
Played with in Monkey Island 2: Le Chuck's Revenge, when one puzzle with a time limit will cause Guybrush to die if he runs out of time...until the player is reminded that the entire game is told in flashback to Elaine, who doubts Guybrush's claim that he died and gives the player another chance at the puzzle.

Close Video Games

A good example of a Robot Disney Death in the He-Man remake series episode "The Roboto Gambit", where the episode's title character sacrifices himself to foil an evil plan, complete with a death scene. Later, Teela mourns that she should have appreciated Roboto's courage and resourcefulness when she had the chance. However, Man-At-Arms immediately states that she will have that opportunity, as he presents the good-as-new Roboto, whom he just repaired.
Duck Dodgers uses it, and then subverts it. Dodgers' Robot Buddy performs a Heroic Sacrifice by hurling itself against a comet and knocking itself to pieces. Dr. I.Q. High is confident that the robot can be rebuilt. But Dodgers really didn't like his Robot Buddy in the first place and "accidentally" breaks the remaining parts. Somehow he comes back later, gathers all the other one-shot villains from previous episodes, and plots Dodgers' demise, only to end up going through the same thing again.
Ben10: Secret of the Omnitrix had two. Hoverboard's piot Gludo was blown to pieces by Vilgax, and Gwen was eaten by an evil plant. Both were rare examples of actually convincing Disney Deaths, thanks in no small part to the fact that they actually used the word "dead" in reference to both characters.
A Fantastic Four episode had the Thing seemingly being killed in a brutal fight (or as Doctor Doom put it, an "athletic little Donnybrook") with the Hulk. He stays "dead" for a good couple of minutes, with nobody being able to get a pulse from him - later revealed to be due to his rocky exterior.
Alec Deleon in Exosquad actually does die, but as his Super Prototype Humongous Mecha happened to contain his personality and memories up to the moment of his death, they were able to simply clone him a new body and download his memories into it, effectively bringing him back to life. (This was actually a result of Executive Meddling.)
Parodied in the Christmas Special Robbie the Reindeer in Hooves of Fire: Robbie's mentor, Old Jingle, appears to die tragically in his arms. Then Jingle starts snoring.
Danny Phantom had the main character's destabilized Opposite Sex Clone die literally by turning into goo even after he used the antidote to cure her. Cue hero mourning over the bucket of goo, then her head pops out and eventually her whole self — now stabilized.
In the episode of South Park with the hippie music festival, the mayor shoots herself in the head when she finally realizes the gravity of her folly. She later reappears when they're using the giant drill with a bandage on her head, ready to take command at mission control.
- For some reason headshots are often non-fatal in South Park: see also Bill Gates (shot in The Movie, reappears with a Band-Aid on his head in The Entity), Britney Spears, the scientist in Night of the Living Homeless, and of course Kenny.
  - Could it be because the characters have no brains?
The 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles LOVES this. Done with Michelangelo in season 3, Leonardo at the end of season 3 (The Tonight Someone Dies commercial didn't hurt matters either), done with April, Casey and Mikey's cat in season 4 (this one a case of all just a dream), done with Leo's entire family during a two-parter in season 4 (both the audience and Leo learns of their surprisingly logical survivals in pt 2 through flashbacks), done with Karai (who was a good guy that year) in season 5, and Casey and April again in season 7 (complete with ominous commercial promising "a very special episode"). A number of supporting characters stay dead for multiple episodes.
The animated Legion of Super Heroes did this in its first season, with Brainiac 5 handing Superman a little piece of himself before running off on a suicide mission. Clark can't both do his part to free the rest of the team and save Brainiac, and when they find him, he's mourning Brainy's lifeless body. The Genre Savvy Legionnaires promptly ask who has the back-up disc.
Justice League Unlimited probably has more but the one This Troper recalls is the apparent death of The Flash after he single handedly takes down "Brainthor", but overtaxes his powers and ends up vanishing into the Speedforce. He stays dead just long enough for us to resolve the whole "is Superman gonna turn into his Justice-Lords Counterpart and bring about an apocalypse?" plotline that's been foreshadowed all season. Only then does J'onn reveal that Wally is not dead yet and the League basically say Screw Destiny and drag him back from the brink.
- The episode "Hereafter" is a particularly prominent example; all of part 1 deals with Superman's apparent death and the reactions to it, and then part 2 explains how he survived.
In Code Lyoko, Yumi gets thrown into the Digital Sea in Season 1 episode "Cruel Dilemma". Fortunately, at the beginning of the episode, falling candy just so happens to complete the materialization code Jérémie'd been working one since forever for Aelita. Loop Hole: He can use it once since he doesn't know what the hell to press. He actually has to think about it before deciding to use the one-shot on Yumi and not Aelita. As such, Yumi becomes un-deleted and can be rematerialized.
- Same thing with Aelita in "Just in Time". She does a Heroic Sacrifice, but thanks to a hair Jérémie managed to materialize at the beginning, he can bring her back (without her memories of the episode, though).
- In "The Key", XANA takes the keys of Lyoko from Aelita's memory, and in turn kills her lifeforce. She dies, until, oh wait, her father (who was supposed to have been killed by XANA already) appears from the abyss of Lyoko and savez her!
- Speaking of Franz Hopper, all evidence gathered (not to mention Jérémie's rude remarks to Aelita) says that Franz basically killed himself saving Aelita in said incident above, until Season 4, when he suddenly lives again as a ball of glittery purple and pink energy. Apparently he can't stay out of the Digital Sea for too long (even though the Digital Sea is supposed to delete everything thrown into it), or else he'll get attacked by XANA real fast.
  - In the show's defense, he does eventually die in the series finale.
The immortal Looney Tunes skit, What's Opera, Doc?, in which we see Elmer Fudd actually kill Bugs Bunny (in a particularly malevolent fashion), at which point he laments at the foolishness of his actions, carrying Bugs away. Bugs looks to the audience and asks "What did ya expect from an Opera? A happy ending?"
Transformers The Movie: Ultra Magnus is dismembered by the Sweeps, but reassembled by the Junkions shortly after.
Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs has this at the end of the movie. Everyone thinks Flint died from stopping the machine, but a few moments later, he's carried down by his Ratbirds, looking no worse for wear too.
- Transformers Armada: Optimus is blasted into dust by the Hydra Cannon, but is resurrected 3 episodes later.
Insectosaurus the giant insect in Monsters Vs Aliens looks dead when blasted by an alien spaceship and wrapped lifeless and unmoving in a cocoon. But he was simply metamorphising into a butterfly, and later comes Back From The Dead just in time to be used as a Deus Ex Machina to save the day.

Close Western Animation

Many characters in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) 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!")
In National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1 (1993), the Jon Lovitz character (modeled after the Joe Pesci character in the Lethal Weapon films) dies early on, only to return a few scenes later. When asked how he got back, he replies, "I thought this was the sequel!"
In Last Action Hero (1993), 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".
Parodied in Kung Pow: Enter the Fist: the Chosen One's mentor Master Tang, love interest Ling, rival Wimp Lo and even 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 even dog is fine!
Chosen One: Then surely Wimp Lo!...
(he runs to Wimp Lo; we hear flies buzzing)
Chosen One: ... oh.
Near the end of the Animaniacs movie "Wakko's Wish", Dot gets hit by one of King Salazar's cannonballs and dies in Yakko's arms... then she says "I'm feeling better now" right when Wakko reaches the wishing star.
- Perhaps she was faking it.
Kung Fu Panda has at the end, one character lying down, with another character crying, only to have the "dead" character say, "I'm not dead, merely resting". No, it wasn't the bird.

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