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alt title(s): He Got Better; He Gets Better; She Got Better Peasant: She turned me into a newt!
Sir Bedevere: A newt?
Nasanna: Shepard? But...you're dead!
Commander Shepard: I got better.
No One Could Survive That, yet apparently he did. He doesn't even seem to have been hurt much. His explanation for this miraculous recovery? "I got better."
The most extreme version of Disney Death, where dead characters are restored with little more than a Hand Wave or Lampshade Hanging. Here it's incredibly obvious that the only reason the character's still alive is because of the First Law Of Resurrection; the writers didn't really want him to die. Unless it's used for comedic purposes (like the proverbial Kenny), this seldom ends well.
This is about characters who survive or overcome ailments that are impossible to "get better" from. When an entire piece of work gets better overall, either through improved pacing or generally better story telling, that's It Gets Better and Growing The Beard respectively. Also one of the possibilities in a Bolivian Army Ending.
Compare Staying Alive. Contrast It Got Worse.
Note that this refers specifically to characters surviving things they shouldn't. Unless there is NO explanation for their survival, IT IS NOT AN EXAMPLE.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Nabeshin's return at the climax of Puni Puni Poemi.
- Pagaya, a minor character in One Piece, is clearly seen being hit by an island-destroying attack early on in the arc, but reappears after the Big Bad's defeat with no explanation, except that it makes the resolution even happier.
- Many, many characters get better in One Piece. Even after being silenced by Mr. 1, or having a biiiiiiig bomb exploding in one's face, etc. Oda is a big fan of the Disney Death.
- As long as said character "dies" with their dream still strong.
- And as long as the death isn't part of a Flashback
- In Gundam Seed, Kira is supposedly "killed" when his rival's MS self-destructs. His crew finds his MS, the cockpit scorched and no body. A few episodes later, he is found, relatively unhurt considering the INSIDE of his MS was burnt to a nice crisp. The manga side story, Astray tried to handwave it by having its main character find Kira and bring him to get medical attention... but it doesn't explain how in god's name Kira survived the attack that should have killed him initially.
- In Martian Successor Nadesico's Show Within A Show, Gekigangar III, this seems to be the case in the last episode when Joe — having died in the hero's arms ("JOOOOOOE!") in a pivotal episode — shows up in the crunch of the final battle, stating only that "this is nothing compared to true Hell." Based on Akito's claim that the episode in question was, by any objective standards, terrible, it would appear that there really was no other explanation.
- The echo of this in the "real world" of the show, Admiral Fukube. Take That, Gai Daigouji fans! wasn't much better, as he was on a ship that exploded when he overclocked its reactor, though he at least tries to come up with an explanation.
- I don't believe there was any explanation for Vicious of Cowboy Bebop coming back after the fifth episode, where a grenade went off just a couple feet away from him. Though since we don't actually see it explode while it's next to him he could have just Outrun The Fireball off-screen.
- Spike survived worse about two seconds later, having been stabbed and then kicked out of a high window. Also, Vicious had just been shot before being hit by the grenade. It could be put down to the show's slightly mystic central ethos of fate and the convergence of the past, requiring Spike and Vicious to survive in order to reunite with Julia so that all three could die symbolically. Or not.
- Or, y'know, they were on another planet with weaker gravity.
- Mai-HiME, the main character explodes taking out an orbital laser in outer space. They see the fiery ashes of apparently her and her CHILD from the explosion coming down. But...the next day, she comes into class, only vaguely curious as to why everyone is so sad. There's much speculation on this.
- The series finale has some of this going on, too, although (dramatic cheat or not) it's at least plausible under the rules of the series. Then, completely out of left field, Alyssa Searrs turns up alive and well despite dying in Miyu's arms in the above episode.
- The minor antagonist Mao from Code Geass was at the receiving end of a round from police officers that Lelouch Mind Controled into shooting him. He showed up alive in the next episode saying he should have been more specific and told them to kill him. Despite the firing being from about fifteen feet away, by about ten officers and a Knightmare Frame.
- Yeah. Too bad he decided to come back and try to take on Lelouch again. Didn't work out so well that time.
- In the manga, he ends up being Killed Off For Real by the police, and doesn't show up again, resulting in Lelouch learning about Suzaku's killing his father in a different way.
- Last Exile: Near the end of the series, Mullin is part of a team that storms a battleship's Claudia Unit to seize it from its Guild operators. The last scene of him in this episode shows him bleeding profusely from at least one bullet wound, lying limp atop a control console, and with Dunya on her knees crying at his side. He inexplicably manages to survive to appear in the last few minutes of the final episode, alive and well.
- While surprising and improbable, it is actually plausible; it just means that he wasn't shot by Instant Death Bullets, and that someone managed to give him medical treatment before it was too late. It just happened to take place offscreen, which is understandable given that it was during the Grand Finale.
- And according to in interview with the creators in a supplemental artbook, Dio Eraclea, as well.
- Blood+ has Diva's Chevaliers come back from certain death on multiple occasions, including Amshel being impaled on the Empire State Building's spire and struck by lightning, becoming a charred, blackened corpse. He comes back the very next episode with no visible injuries.
- In Hellsing, after absorbing Schrödinger Alucard is removed from existence. Eventually he gets better. It takes 30 years, and he had to hunt down the hundreds of thousands of souls he had consumed within his "self" and kill them.
- In Clannad, Nagisa, Ushio, and Tomoya all got better at the Gainax Ending.
- Gerard was hit through god knows how many stories of a tower by a superpowered mage and exposed to dangerous levels of Etherion magic (the ultimate magic in the story). When he comes back he's in some sort of coma/trance as a result, but is otherwise completely unscratched. And a few chapters later he's up and kicking butt again.
- Thanks to the authors painfully vague storytelling, many people assumed that Killy losing half of his head at the end of Blame! finally killed him for good. It didn't.
- To a lesser extent, Gauron in the first season finale of Full Metal Panic. True, he had a Lambda Driver, but surviving three hundred kilograms of high explosive point-blank when his AS self-destructs? That's a bit much. Though he had other instances of miraculous survival such as when a young Sousuke shot him IN THE HEAD (he explained that he had a titanium plate inside due to a previous "accident") or when Sousuke blew him away with a cannon round; Gauron's AS is decapitated... yet a short time later, it was unscathed, only shut down due to overheating. This was repeated again in their next engagement: the Codarl blown to pieces yet minutes later being miraculously repaired for no apparent reason and its pilot being uninjured.
- In the third season finale, Sousuke found him dying on a bed hooked up to life support. Gauron managed to taunt him so much that The Stoic flipped off and shot him half a dozen times, flatlining him... and setting off a bomb hidden under the bed. Time will tell if that's enough to stick.
- In the second season of Darker than Black, one character takes a full hit at point-blank range from an anti-tank rifle, and seemingly dies. In the very next scene, however, the same character is apparently unhurt, apart from some blood on his forehead.
- Eden of the East seems to make it perfectly clear that Pants made a heroic sacrifice trying to give the heroes crucial information. However, he is seen in the final episode, bandaged and in the hospital, but otherwise cheerful.
Comic Books
- Before Captain America was apparently Killed Off For Real, Steve Rogers has had quite a few deaths go by where he reappeared again with no explanation and the death itself completely ignored by the plot.
- He's getting better from his recent death, too.
- Spider Man villain Hammerhead has been killed multiple times in seemingly irreversible ways, including a nuclear explosion, only to bounce right back with some hand waved explanation, if any at all. In the Ultimate universe, he had his head exploded by Gambit in Ultimate X-Men, only to appear sometime later in Ultimate Spider-Man, right as rain. When another character points out that he's supposed to be dead, his response is, "It sucked. I came back."
- In Pearls Before Swine, Whale, a killer-whale character who was killed off via packaged explosive in 2006, inexplicably returns in a 2008 strip for a baseball game. When Rat confronts author Stephen Pastis about this, Pastis just casually answers that Whale had "undied". Partially subverted in the next day's strip, when Rat takes Whale off their team for being "technically dead."
- The irony is that the excuse of "[character] undied" is something Rat first used. He periodically writes a story called "The Adventures of Angry Bob," which invariably ends with the protagonist dead (most memorably after being assaulted while expressing happiness via a kazoo: "Many toots-for-joy later..."). To explain how he could write sequels, he started the first one with, "Angry Bob undied." (Goat reacts as one would expect.)
- In Kyle Baker's Plastic Man series, Woozy Winks dies dramatically in the "On the Lam" plotline, but comes back smiling with no consequences in the last panel.
- Sentry's wife was once killed by Ultron, and he resurrected her in a way that was never explained. Sentry himself in Dark Avengers was turned into combination of The Worf Effect and this. First he was aborted from time by Morgan Le Fay. After Morgan's defeat, he returned, scaring the hell out of all his teammates. Then his head was blown up by alien weapon, and in next issue he acts like nothing happened. And it's confirmed, that he will appear in next year storylines, which means he will get better after last issue, when he was blown up to mere atoms. What's wrong with this guy?
- Bob Reynolds is a psionic who is basically the Dr. Manhattan of the Marvel Universe, with a ridiculous level of power over his own form, and his surroundings (usually as the Cape persona, the Sentry). Pulling himself back together after every increasingly outlandish death is likely an extension of his near-omnipotence and a tongue-in-cheek allusion to superheroes always coming back after seemingly being killed off.
- Superman was killed by Doomsday. He was no more. He had ceased to be. An ex-Kryptonian. Fortunately, along comes one of his would be successors, the Last Son of Krypton/The Eradicator, and steals his body to use as his own personal solar battery. It took some time, but eventually this process stored up enough solar energy in Kal-El's body to bring him back from the great phone booth in the sky.
- And on the subject of Doomsday, this seems to be his main superpower... When he dies, he comes back to life and gains immunity to whatever killed him...
- Subverted in Bionicle; the original Hydraxon died years before, but Dekar turns into him. Another character remarks that he had already died, to which he replies, "I got better."
Fan Fic
Film
- The UN Secretary-General in Godzilla: Final Wars enters with the line, "I managed to escape." He was last seen on a plane that exploded. Even funnier on one release, where a Japanese grammatical ambiguity has it mistranslated as "I must have escaped somehow."
- The aliens probably beamed him up from the jet in order to make a copy of him.
- Dr. Sam Loomis from Halloween. In the second movie, he lights up a lighter in a room full of hydrogen to kill Michael Myers; he blows up practically the entire first floor of the hospital. However, in Halloween 4, he shows up, unscathed but for a burn mark on the side of his face, and a crippled walk. It seems that the good doctor is as indestructible as the killer he goes after! In the Rob Zombie remake, Michael crushes Loomis's skull, but he will apparently be back for Part II. I can't decide which one is more badass/ludicrous.
- Don't forget Michael himself (who was originally supposed still be human). Before the explosion, Michael becomes blind by Laurie shooting him in the eyes. In the fourth film, he can see just fine.
- Tommy Five-Tone at the end of Hudson Hawk:
Hudson: You're supposed to be all cracked up at the bottom of the hill!
Tommy: Air bags! Can you fucking believe it?
Anna: You're supposed to be blown up into fiery chunks of flesh!
Tommy: Sprinkler system set up in the back! Can you fucking believe it?
Hudson: ... Yeah, that's probably what happened!
- Several people in the Scary Movie series, most obviously Brenda, who was literally torn to pieces and even had a funeral in the third movie, but was suddenly found on a crashed plane in the fourth.
- In the Pirates Of The Caribbean series, Captain Barbossa is miraculously alive at the end of the second film and during the third film with just the explanation that "he was only dead." Of course, being tended to by a voodoo lady who also happens to be the mortal prison of the goddess Calypso might have had something to do with it.
- One of the most infamous lines from Jaws: The Revenge is Hoagie's "It wasn't easy!", the only explanation he offers as to how he survived being trapped in a helicopter attacked by a shark.
- Baron Munchausen in the Terry Gilliam film, "And that was just one of the many occasions on which I met my death, a fascinating condition that I can highly recommend."
- The Lemony Narrator and protagonist of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang complains about films bringing back dead characters, but, well, that's what happened with Perry, so he can't just cut it. Instead, he brings back all the dead characters in the film. And Abraham Lincoln. For audience members who also hate I Got Better moments, Perry's "body" was last seen still breathing.
- In the live-action George Of The Jungle, the villain falls off a rope-bridge hundreds of feet into a gorge. The narrator says, "Don't worry, nobody dies in this story. They just get really big boo-boos!" Sure enough, in the next scene he's sitting at a campfire, scowling, with little criss-cross tape bandages on his face.
- Barely averted in From Russia With Love. At a preview screening, the director's son noticed that a scene featuring the Bulgar assassin occurred after that character was shown to be killed. As a result, Karim Bey's Crowning Moment Of Awesome had to be cut.
- Possibly Escape From New York. Though there is never an explanation, nearly every time Kurt Russell's character Snake Plisskin meets another character for the first time, he is greeted with "I heard you were dead." At one point, I believe he replies "I get that a lot." Apparently, Snake Plisskin is both famous among the prisoners on the island of New York, and famously dead.
Literature
- Randall Flagg in Stephen King's The Stand is standing right next to a nuclear bomb when it goes off, and is presumably incinerated instantaneously. He gets better in time to appear in The Dark Tower series. In a scene added to the end of the extended version of The Stand, after the bomb goes off, he finds himself walking out of the ocean on the coast of western Africa with no idea how he got there.
- However, Flagg does in fact vanish the instant before the bomb detonates; his clothes are seen standing up with no one in them, and then they collapse. This appears to be Flagg's signature "get out of jail free" card. Why he does not use this ability to escape from Mordred in the Dark Tower books is not clear.
- Gandalf's return from the bottom of the pit after his battle with the Balrog in The Lord of the Rings. He later told his comrades, albeit vaguely, about dying on the mountain top and being sent back to finish his work.
- Gandalf was an immortal maia-spirit who couldn't really "die;" likewise he was sent back by Eru (God), so it isn't quite in the same category as other versions.
- Spoofed in the Harvard Lampoon parody Bored Of The Rings, claiming that Gandalf continued his activities "once out of the pit." Evidently, it's a long story.
- Michael Crichton's The Lost World, the sequel to Jurassic Park, is a prime example of this trope. In the book Jurassic Park (although not in The Movie), Ian Malcolm suffers from septocemia from a T-Rex bite, and is said to be dead during a conversation near the end of the novel. At the beginning of The Lost World, however, he is shown giving a lecture at a university, with no explanation other than that he was "only slightly dead".
- Jesus in The Bible
- Lampshaded in Artemis Fowl, when a character remarks to Battle Butler Butler (yes, that's his name) that he'd heard Butler was dead, Butler offhandedly replies "I got better."
- In the Highroad Trilogy, Heredes dies twice. His response is the same afterwards: "It's terribly boring being dead."
Live Action TV
- The Obituary Montage at the end of one episode of Look Around You casually says "viewers may be pleased to know that Clive Pounds, who died during filming of the this program, has since come back to life".
- Doctor Who, "The Mark of the Rani": The Rani discusses the fact that the last time we saw the Master, he was being burned to death in a volcano.
The Master: Come, come, the whole universe knows I'm indestructible!
The Rani: Is that so?
- In season 5 of 24, Tony Almeida dies in Jack Bauer's arms. In season 7, he's alive and well and has pulled a Face Heel Turn, and Jack is genuinely surprised to learn this. It's implied that his death, which at the time appeared to be a genuine attempt to kill him by a captured terrorist with ties to President Evil, was in fact staged in the same manner that Jack's was in season 4.
- Mikhail on Lost walks though a sonic barrier and suffers a complete mental breakdown, complete with blood spurting from every orifice. He goes on to make a total recovery: "Fortunately the fences were not set to lethal levels". After that, he was beaten unconscious without suffering any damage, and got harpooned in the chest — and survived. He was finally killed by diving underwater and holding a live grenade to his face.
- Lampshaded and played straight in the French Canadian show Le Coeur A Ses Raisons. When Brett is buried alive and manages to escape, the details of his evasion aren't shown. Brett later breaks the fourth wall and says "If my life was a TV show, the details of my miraculous escape would be included in the season's DVD (which it wasn't). Later, when characters tell him they thought he was dead, he simply answers "I'm better, thanks".
- Possible Trope Namer: "A Full Rich Day", a third-season episode of M*A*S*H which aired in 1974 included a subplot of Hawkeye apparently misplacing the body of a deceased lieutenant from Luxembourg. At the end of the episode the camp holds the funeral for the absent soldier, who staggers out of post-op saluting as the Luxembourg national anthem is played, resulting in the following exchange:
Hawkeye: [to Trapper] I thought you said he was dead!
Trapper: [shrugs] He got better.
- Another Possible Trope Namer: Babylon5
Drazi Ambassador: Captain…we're sorry…We thought you were dead.
John Sheridan: I was. I'm better now.
- Sylar from Heroes. Yes, he can heal, but he was reduced to a charred skeleton after his intended death, then just came back next season.
- Even before Sylar got the healing power, he was pronounced dead when he was in Company custody, then just sorta randomly came back to life. Fanon has come up with numerous explanations, but the show itself didn't really bother.
- This applies to all characters with healing powers. Adam, for instance, should have died when White Beard's camp blew up, since the regenerators can't survive trauma that kills the brain, and Adam, brain included, was blown to smithereens.
- It was also lampshaded in the season one finale.
Sylar: Didn't I kill you?
Peter: Didn't take.
- All the characters from the little-known Australian show Double the Fist. Characters literally explode and appear fine in the next scene.
- Tara was going to come back this way in the final episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Fortunately, good taste prevailed.
- Also, Amber Benson didn't want to torment the fans any more.
- Played straight later with Spike, though.
- Earlier, also played straight as the twist to end the first season of Angel. Angel's ex-girlfriend Darla, whom he had staked three years earlier (in the second of Darla's four deaths), was reconstituted as a human by Wolfram and Hart.
- NCIS, "Conspiracy Theory": After DiNozzo notices FBI agent Fornell (who had recently faked his death) sitting in Gibbs' seat:
DiNozzo: I thought you were dead, Fornell.
Fornell: I got better.
- This exchange is then repeated several times, with other characters asking Fornell the same question.
Professional Wrestling
- ...does this a lot. The most blatant example was at the end of the 2000 Survivor Series Pay-Per-View, which ended with Stone Cold Steve Austin hijacking a forklift and dumping a car containing Triple H from a great height. The next night on Raw Is War, it was revealed that Trips had only suffered "minor injuries" and seven days later, he reappeared on television looking as good as new aside from some medical tape around his ribs.
- A particularly egregious example, though, is from WCW, which just seems to go Beyond The Impossible for pure strangeness, even for wrestling. After a Monster Truck Match on a rooftop for a PPV, Hulk Hogan and the Giant (now the Big Show in WWE) have a scuffle at the edge of the roof. And, yup, the Giant takes a tumble over the edge. Hogan's in shock... and then for the main event regular match between the two, on the same night, the Giant comes out without so much as a scratch. Not much in the way of explanation is ever provided.
- Are there any questions as to why WCW died the way it did?
- This happens in a lot of storylines involving the Undertaker. It's somewhat justified by the fact that he's portrayed as a supernatural being.
Radio
- The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy ended its first radio series with Zaphod, Trillian and Marvin being eaten by a shape-shifted alien. The Christmas special that launched the second series brought back Zaphod and Marvin (and changed Trillian's fate to Put On A Bus). Zaphod's first words in the episode were "I've recovered." Marvin had lost an arm shortly before getting eaten; as this was never referenced again, it presumably got better too.
- Since he was a robot, it was probably replaced. Every other part of his body was replaced at some stage, except of course the terribly painful diodes all down his left side.
Theatre
- In Candide, Candide meets Cunegonde, who was earlier apparently killed, and in the duet "You Were Dead, You Know" asks her how she escaped death. She dodges the question.
Video Games
- In Metal Wolf Chaos, you can shoot down and blow up a reporter's helicopter. When you do, he says "My fellow viewers, please rest at ease, for I, Peter McDonald, have somehow managed to escape. I'll return to the action in another helicopter."
- Likewise, at one point a resistance helicopter is shot down, and you hear a message on the radio saying "don't worry Mr. President, us resistance soldiers have thorough knowledge of how to escape". All very good and well, except that the helicopter was hit by a missile from a tank, exploded in a ball in flame, and then the burning wreckage plunged into the Hudson River. Thorough knowledge indeed.
- Zero's infamous "I hid away to repair myself." near the start of Mega Man X 6.
- Almost subverted as he, when he has the occasion to do so, asks Doctor Light if he's the one who repaired him. After a short silence, Doctor Light say his resurrection was a miracle. But no proper explanation is ever given.
- If one completes Halo on Legendary, they are treated to a video of Sergeant Johnson and an elite fighting over a plasma rifle on the Halo ringworld, who end up hugging as they see The Pillar of Autumn, the ship that destroys said Halo, begin exploding. In Halo 2, he's still alive. How? That's confidential information, soldier. *
OK, it was just a non-canon easter egg.
- Bungie remarked on this in the (I think) Halo 3 Legendary Edition bonus DVD by saying that he was "Like Kenny" he could die in every single level he's in, but he'll be alive in the next one.
- On the other hand, Johnson has died on-screen in Halo 3... presumably for good, now.
- Rufus from Final Fantasy VII supposedly died from the Weapon assault on Midgar, yet he's fine in Advent Children. When Cloud meets Rufus Shinra in Advent Children, he's shocked to find his supposedly exploded enemy alive. Rufus begins to explain what happened — and Cloud cuts him off impatiently, and turns to leave.
Rufus: ...The day of the explosion—
Cloud: What do you want?
Rufus: I managed to get out of the building—
Cloud: Why did you call me here?
Rufus: before it collapsed—
Cloud: I'm leaving!
- Additionally, contrary to popular belief, Tseng never died in the original game either.
- It's been said in Dirge of Cerberus that Rufus Shinra merely 'ducked' to avoid being killed. He was later evacuated from Midgar when Meteor fell, via helicopter.
- On that note, Hojo is dead on the floor in FFVII and up and kicking in Dirge of Cerberus, but it's unclear whether that's more this trope or its fraternal twin...
- It's neither. In Dirge Hojo is in fact an angry (and quite mad) spirit who possessed Weiss for most of the game, up until he loses the duel with Vincent and ends up banished/discorporated/whatever.
- Even more blatant use of this trope is seen in Final Fantasy IV in which ALL but five of the player's party members suffer tragic deaths, with all of them (even Cid, who rode a nuclear bomb into a pit, was at the epicenter of the explosion, fell several thousand feet and landed on some pointy rocks, then dragged himself several miles to the dwarf city to rest up) coming back near the end. Except Tellah.
- This trope occurs in some form in several Final Fantasy games. And also, you can't ignore how, in regular battles in several of the games, a character can be turned to stone and then shattered, which incapacitates them for the duration of that battle, but then you pop 'em a Phoenix Down and they're good as new.
- In The Curse of Monkey Island's insurance fraud puzzle:
Guybrush: I died! I really did!
Stan: And you just... got better?
Guybrush: Well... yeah.
- Considering Stan himself had just survived being trapped in a nailed-shut coffin for presumably months, he's really not one to talk.
- In fact, he even acknowledges that he's been dead in his life insurance sales pitch.
- Something of a Funny Aneurysm Moment, considering Guybrush really does die at the end of Chapter 4 of Tales of Monkey Island, when LeChuck dramatically stabs him in the gut. Naturally, Guybrush really does "get better" in Chapter 5.
- In Beyond Good And Evil, this happens near the end of the game with Jade's uncle Pey'j. However, despite his casual dialogue concerning his death-and-ressurrection, there are a few reasons he tries to give...
Jade: Pey'j, I... but you were...
Pey'j: Dead. I know.
- The Infocom text adventure game Leather Goddesses Of Phobos features various scenarios where your helper character (Trent or Tiffany, depending on which bathroom you went into at the beginning of the game) dying in horrific fashions, at one point hopping on a grenade and exploding right in front of you, but he/she always comes back at a later point with an improbable explanation of how he/she could have possibly survived.
- Lampshaded in The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion by an insane Argonian NPC at the Shrine of Sheogorath, the madgod.
Argonian: I used to be a dog. I got better. Not a better dog, though. I'm a terrible dog now.
- This is likely one of Bethesda's many popcult jokes, like fishysticks. But still likely an example none-the-less.
- Metal Slug features tough, brawny Allen O'Neil, who slumps over in a spray of blood at the end of his encounter in nearly every game (even being EATEN BY A WHALE in 2) with a death cry of "See you in Hell!", and yet is alive and kicking in the next game, or in the case of Metal Slug 3, LATER THAT LEVEL.
- Harold, when telling his stories in Fallout 1&2, if asked, "How did you survive?" answers, "I didn't — I died!" Harold loves that joke.
- Used in Universe At War: Earth Assault. Orlok apparently kills some major characters during the Hierarchy campaign — they show up alive and well in the Masari campaign with no explanation of how they survived. It only adds to the Shoot The Shaggy Dog feel of that entire leg of the game.
- Albert Wesker of ResidentEvil fame.
- Played for laughs in MadWorld with the Black Baron, who introduces every deathtrap mini-game only to be made into a quick demo of each one by his ladyfriend. Despite being brutally murdered at least once in every level, he never so much as has to change his outfit, and is actually the last boss of the game.
- We get two of these in Tales Of Vesperia:
The first is after Raven's Heroic Sacrifice in the Baction Shrine. The whole place collapses on top of him. It's implied that his subordinates dug him out, but how was he not crushed to death?
The second was when Yuri falls off of The Enduring Shrine of Zaude. All we're told is that Duke saves him, but how exactly is someone saved from falling off of something that high in the air? Duke isn't shown to have any type of flying device/creature at that point. So how on earth did he save Yuri?
- At the time, Duke was partnered with Khroma, a draconian entelexia who could fly (remember the scene with her descending upon a heat-stroking Yuri in the desert?). Most likely, she caught Yuri and Duke simply took the credit.
- Star Trek: 25th Anniversary ran a print adverting spot that consisted of a picture of Kirk looking surprised to see Spock and asking "I thought you were dead!" Spock replies "I rebooted."
- The line is dropped verbatim by Commander Shepard in promotional footage of Mass Effect 2, following a previous teaser trailer which declared Shepard killed in action.
- To be fair to Nassana, Shepard did die, Cerberus just poured billions of credits into a project to bring him/her back to life. Still nothing is more bad-ass than getting better from death.
- The Time Crisis character Wild Dog who is in every game bar Project Titan, in a series where the protagonists change each game. In the first game he falls off a castle and drops a radio detonator, detonating a huge set of explosives that goes off during the fall. In the second game, at the launch site of a nuclear satellite he leans against what appear to be warheads before using another radio detonator. The third game features the protagonists asking him "Don't you ever die?!" before he uses the same radio detonator again. The fourth game has him buried beneath large, full, metal boxes weighing at least tonnes only for his arm to burst out of the rubble to activate what appears to be the same radio detonator. The only lasting effect of these is that between the first and second games one of his arms is replaced with a machine-gun.
- Hate to break it to you, but Dog is, in fact, in Project Titan (you might have been thinking of Crisis Zone). BTW, thought Wild Fang was toast because he didn't show up in 4? Yeah, me too.
- The Dread Lords in Galactic Civilizations. They got crushed by the humans and their allies in the game Dread Lords, but there was a set-up that it was a ruse. They came back and got beaten again in Dark Avatar. In Twilight of the Arnor they're back AGAIN with no explanation at all.
- Valkyria Chronicles has "Ty the Immortal". The Elite Mook who you fight, and kill, three times in the game. Other than his name, it's not explained just how he does this.
- Reaper from Unreal Tournament 3, he is killed by the Krall in the opening cinema, but is later healed up, and in the very next scene, shooting a rocket launcher against his allies for a training session (In which you are always revived making everyone have this trope)
- Ridley of Metroid fame is killed is nearly every game, sometimes in incredibly extravagant ways (how the hell can anyone survive an entire planet blowing up around them?), yet he's back and better than ever by the time the next game rolls around. He's even returned multiple times within a single game (although to Prime 3's credit, they actually show him surviving his first battle with Samus). No explanation is ever given for how Ridley keeps coming back to life, although much fan speculation abound.
- In Portal, when GLADOS (and, presumably, the Aperture Science facility itself) is completely dismantled in a violent explosion, yet GLADOS sings about being "Still Alive" in the end credits.
- The Nameless One from Planescape Torment does this all the time, and at one point (at the beginning of the game) actually says: "I think I actually had died... and got better"
- At the end of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, the planet Phaaze is destroyed with Samus still on it. Afterwards, she inexplicibly reappears flying back in her ship. First, that explosion should have killed her. Second, if she had to open a wormhole to get to the distant planet, how the heck did she get back?
- Are you really going to question the amazing odd-crushing Bad Ass that is Samus Aran? REALLY?
- Eliphias the Inheritor from the Dawn of War series appears to be heading this way. At the end of the Chaos Stronghold mission in Dark Crusade, Eliphas was killed by a demon prince. Now he's coming back in Chaos Rising. Considering the manner Eliphas died, it certainly sounds as if he's headed for this trope.
- In Metal Gear Solid Liquid Snake is the epitany of this trope. You "kill" him no fewer than four times (once in the Hind D battle, twice in the battle with REX, third in the fistfight on top of REX, and fourth during a car chase). He finally dies of Fox Die.
- In Metal Gear Solid 2 it seems that Liquid is still not dead, but instead possessing the body of Revolver Ocelot. By the time Metal Gear Solid 4 rolls along he's in full control.
- Of course, it turns out that this was all part of a Xanatos Gambit by Revolver Ocelot and that Liquid, in fact, really died for good back at Shadow Moses.
- In Metal Gear Solid 4 this also happens with Raiden, who seemingly dies, complete with a Really Dead montage, saving Snake from the Outer Haven submarine when, in fact, he survives. The characters don't even seem to think his survival is a big deal, casually mentioning it.
Web Animation
- In the final chapter of Broken Saints, Raimi and Oran are miraculously alive and well, despite that fact that in the Grand Finale the former was hit with some crazy mind blast thing that threw him across the room and made him unable to move, and the latter had his hand cut off and was later stabbed about ten times with a big ol' knife, with no suggestion that they received immediate medical attention.
- One possibility is that when Shandala reversed the broadcast to positive energy, it manifested in some kind of healing magic that kept Raimi and Oran alive, although even if so, that they survived long enough to be healed is itself a miracle.
- And then of course there are the Epileptic Trees: Raimi and Oran aren't alive in the final chapter.
- In issue 3 of "Teen Girl Squad", The Ugly One gets "MSG'd!", destroying her stomach lining and leaving her, if not necessarily dead, limp on the ground with X'd-out eyes. In the next scene she reappears good as new, finally saying "My stomach feels better."
- The whole idea of Teen Girl Squad is the various Teen Girls dying in wild and creative ways, with each of them returning as good as new in the next episode.
- Also, Homsar after Strong Bad drops a heavy weight on him in his first appearance. Later Lampshaded in a message on Strong Bad's answering machine when he mentions being in the hospital after the incident.
Web Comics
- In the Walkyverse how Mike came back from being Deader Than Dead and unrevivable in It's Walky, to working at a toy store in Shortpacked is only questioned once when Robin started, and never brought up again. Galasso may have some hand in it, as he was somehow able to resurrect Ronald Reagan.
- More recently it's been stated he showed up at his parent's house five years after was reported dead, and they decided not to ask anything.
- Pointed out by a third character complete with Lampshade Hanging in No Rest For The Wicked
 .
- Order Of The Stick had the following exchange (granted, Sabine is an immortal demon):
Nale: Honey, she snapped your neck!
Sabine: ... I got better.
- Of course, it also helps that she was still talking immediately after the neck-snapping.
- Also, in strip #698 We have this dialogue:
Haley: Belkar may have stabbed him (the Oracle), honey.
Roy: Oh! Yeah, but he got better.
- Parodied in this early Adventurers!
- VG Cats has this strip:
Leo: You've got a Time Machine?! You gotta let me use it! Aeris: But...but I aborted you. From time. Leo: I got better.
- Othar Tryggvassen (Gentleman Adventurer!) from Girl Genius— so far he has been tossed out of an airship no less than three times and comes back each time with no real explanation. Made Of Iron doesn't even start to cover the bugger's inability to just die.
- Actually, Othar's repeated survival of freefall is explained in his canon Twitter Adventures: He has rocket boots. Of course, this is only revealed when he tries to use the boots to survive a fall and his suitcase blasts away to safety because he's not wearing them... He survives anyway, somehow (involving honey).
- Casey And Andy featured "Two Mad Scientist Roommates Who Occasionally Die." Through a run of exactly 666 strips, this was lampshaded continuously, directly questioned by other characters numerous times (including Satan), and explained not once.
- The return of Fructose Riboflavin in The Inexplicable Adventures Of Bob!
- Sluggy's leggy redhead ninja assassin has been blown up in self-destructing mad scientist's lairs, disemboweled and dropped off a cliff, disemboweled and poisoned, sniped in the head, and too many etceteras to count. Torg has witnessed her death often enough to carry on with the assumption that she'll be back.
- Suburban Jungle had a character who got eaten more than a decade ago in Kevin And Kell turn up. He spoke the name of this trope in response to surprise at his continued existence.
- Fighter uses this to explain how he survived being stabbed in the head by Black Mage.
Black Mage: Your brain was pierced with a sharp stabbing impliment. I was going to add to it today so it wouldn't look like an accident.
Fighter: Oh yeah, that was yesterday. This is today. I slept, it's cool.
Black Mage: And?!
Fighter: And now I'm better.
- This is, of course, because in most Final Fantasy games, characters are revived after a stay at an inn or the use of a tent. Not, however, in the first game, off of which the strip is based!
- Visage invokes this trope by name in this strip.
- Used in this Schlock Mercenary strip. Partly justified by their level of medical technology, but still hilarious.
- A lot of the main characters in Schlock Mercenary have been killed or 'so close to dying it is hopeless' or even 'nothing left but his head', and still come back stronger. Often, they come back a lot stronger than before.
- Actually, later on in the series this is explained by the fact Der Trihs was part of a secret government soldier upgrade program, that pretty much made his skull invulnerable to damage. Which is also why he survives tons of other deadly accidents as "head in a jar" (a situation from which "getting better" is actually considered normal in the series).
- Darth Maul had "gotten better" from his death in The Phantom Menace by the time he shows up in Ansem Retort. All he says about it is Obi-Wan got in a Hollywood cheap shot.
- Note that Riku getting better at the end of Season Six is NOT an example despite it looking to be. He says he's got an explanation.
Western Animation
- Ralph Wiggum's return in the "Bible Stories" episode of The Simpsons.
Bart: Ralph? I thought you died!
Ralph: Nope.
- Also in The Simpsons, Grandpa relating a story about his mountain-climbing days; "I fell 8,000 feet and landed on some pointy rocks. Of course, people were a lot tougher in those days. I was jitterbuggin' that very night!"
- Note that his story begins with him warning Homer not to try climbing a particular mountain: "You'll die up there, just like I did!"
- And Dr Marvin Monroe returned with the line "I've been very sick.", despite the Marvin Monroe Memorial Hospital from several seasons before.
- He also had a tombstone in the cemetery.
- A soap opera on the show features a Priest walking in on an illicit affair, to which the woman says "I thought you were dead". The priest jovially responds "I was!"
- Not to mention Hans Moleman's having been killed on-screen a dozen plus times in various ways, from being run off the road and crashing into the birthplace of Norman Vincent Peale, to being executed in Springfield Jail on what's implied to be a shoddy legal basis, to Mr. Burns confusing him for Lucky the Leprechaun and taking a power drill to his skull in order to "get his Lucky Charms".
- Though not quite death, there was Homer's version of that Harry Potter parody. "I escaped from the hourglass somehow!"
- Invader Zim hilariously does this in a conversation with the often screwed Invader Skooge:
Zim: Skooge? I thought the Tallest killed you?
Skooge: Yeah, but I'm OK now.
- Played for laughs in Duckman in the episode "Westward, No!". The character Big Jack McBastard is trampled by a horse, eaten down to his skeleton by buzzards, said skeleton is crumbled by Duckman, and finally his remains are buried. He returns at the end of the episode to scare off the posse of ranch hands, completely unharmed. When asked how he survived he simply replied "long story", said his goodbyes, then left.
- Kenny on South Park, after his ultimate death at the end of season 5, was reintroduced at the end of the following season with little more than the following explanation: "Oh, I've been places".
- Notably in episode "Die Hippie, Die" Mayor shoots herself in the head but apparently she got better before the end of the show.
- Despite having an enormous gravity cannon blow up in his face (taking about half of the city's tallest building with it,) the titular character of Darkwing Duck survived... although he was still wearing casts and was bandaged head-to-toe several days later.
- Teen Titans uses this a few times to varying degrees. The most blatant example is the second season finale, "Aftershock", where Terra hunts down and seemingly kills all five Titans. Her methods range from No One Could Survive That deaths to smashing Robin with a boulder at point-blank range, at which point it immediately cuts to her kicking his crest across the floor to Slade, implying that yes, there was even a body, and she pulled it off. And then they all show up underground looking little the worse for wear and ready for round two.
- Along with Terra herself. Maybe. Possibly. I think?
- Matched (if not topped) by the fifth season premiere, where the Doom Patrol falls one by one as they fight their way to the Brain's lair, except not really.
- Ice Age used this with Diego’s “death”. He seemingly sacrifices himself to save his friends from the other saber tooths, but he’s fine and dandy at the end of the film. His response?
Diego: Nine lives, baby!
- At the beginning of the Transformers Animated episode "Nature Calls", a familiar looking construction worker is attacked by the Monster Of The Week, and is implied to have died. He still shows up again.
- In Ben 10, the third time Kevin shows up (despite apparently being killed previously) his explanation of how he survived boils down to this, as well as a recap of what happened last time. He doesn't actually use the phrase, but it's implied.
- Also, the Vreedle Brothers in Alien Force all but say this, though they explain it immediately after (turns out they're what you might call clones).
Gwen: "We saw you two go up in an explosion!"
Octagon: "Yeah, that sort of thing occurs on a fairly regular basis."
- Just how did Harley Quinn survive the fatal fall in Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker? They never even bother explaining it.
- Reportedly, the writers have confirmed that Poison Ivy's stamina booster from back in the day is responsible for her survival. It also helps that The Joker himself was a master of this kind of thing.
- For examples of Mr J being a master of this kind of thing, see Mask of the Phantasm and The Batman/Superman Movie.
- Hilariously Lampshaded in Mad Jack the Pirate:
Mad Jack: Didn't you die a while back?
Angus Dagnabbit: Aye. I got better.
Mad Jack: You were DEAD! How do you get better from being DEAD, you Scottish twit?!?!
- In Season 3 of Metalocalpyse, Ofdensen is revealed to be alive— having "gotten better," despite having been shot, pronounced dead, and presumably undergone an autopsy and coroner's report certifying him as such, after the end of Season 2. Then again, other previous indications have shown that he's not quite human to begin with.
Other
- In Thumb Wars, as Princess Bunhead runs onto the ship despite no rescuing scene being written, she says "I escaped somehow. Let's go!"
- In one of the (non-canon) endings to Red Vs Blue, Sarge is shot in the head at close range by a sniper rifle. He shows up less than a minute later, and Tucker says "I thought you were dead!" and he responds "I was dead, Doc revived me!" He is then killed again.
- Across the various Star Wars media, there's a reoccuring joke about a certain Jedi Master called K'Kruhk who often gets killed on screen/panel and is seen alive and unhurt in later medias. He's even aware of the trope, once commenting that "I've died any number of times in my life. Or so I've heard.". The kicker is the Star Wars legacy comic, set 138 years after A New Hope. K'Kruhk is not only still alive, but he suffers another I Got Better moment within a few issues of the comics.
- In "Fearless Fosdick", the "comic within the comic" in Al Capp's classic strip Li'l Abner, the titular Fosdick (a satirical Captain Ersatz of comic strip detective Dick Tracy) would often be ventilated by flying bullets in the course of his adventures, and left resembling a Swiss cheese by the end of an episode. Nevertheless, he always recovered from his "injuries":
The Chief: Fosdick! I thought you were dead! Fearless Fosdick: Yes, but it didn't prove fatal. Just a mild case.
Real Life
- Wild Bill Hickock, while grossly exaggerating the odds against him in a fight would answer the breathless question "What happened next, Bill?" with "Why, boys, they killed me!"
- Towards the end of the Winter War, Simo Häyhä was shot in the face, supposedly shot the guy who shot him in the face and fell into a coma he woke up from eleven days later.
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