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Never count a human dead unless you've seen the body. And even then you can make a mistake. — Frank Herbert, Dune
All slain enemies will be cremated, or at least have several rounds of ammunition emptied into them, not left for dead at the bottom of the cliff. The announcement of their deaths, as well as any accompanying celebration, will be deferred until after the aforementioned disposal. — Rule 13 of the Evil Overlord List
I'm not dead! I'm not dead! I'm not! I'm getting better! I don't want to go on the cart! I feel fine! I think I'll go for a walk! I feel happy, I feel happy...ooph! — Monty Python And The Holy Grail (Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Trope, but too good to pass up)
The bad guy has been whacked a mortal whack and fallen off the cliff, bounced twice on the rocks on the way down and splashed into the ocean. Our hero dusts his hands and pronounces that ticket punched — No One Could Survive That.
Our hero locates a tavern for celebratory quaff of ale. Just as he is tipping it back, the tavern door slams open and there is the bad guy, soaking wet and mad as hell. He was Not Quite Dead. Often, he is now in completely perfect health.
Ding! Round Two begins.
Compare Only Mostly Dead and Almost Dead Guy. May, in fact, be the exact same thing as Staying Alive. Often shown by having their eyes open. Not to be confused with The Undead.
Another example of this is when the bad guy (or good guy for that matter) may not fall off the cliff in the first place, but is in fact still hanging on to the ledge and might have caught on to the edge or just let go of the rope, but is still clinging to the rocky surface.
If a villain does this a lot, it can be classified as Joker Immunity.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- Perfect Cell in Dragonball Z is teleported into the afterlife by Goku after initiating a self destruct technique set to go at any minute, after which he regenerates from a single surviving cell with an increased power level from Saiyan DNA pushed to the brink of death and which absorbed the teleportation technique that Goku had just used. Using said technique, Cell returns to the battlefield back on Earth just as everyone had believed the battle over and begun to mourn Goku's passing.
- Naruto's Orochimaru wins the award for most Not Quite Deads within the shortest time period. In the space of a few chapters, he was dismembered by Sasuke, only to come back and eat Sasuke, only to get dismembered again, only to come back as The Virus to some degree inside his Battle Butler, Kabuto.
- He comes back again from within Sasuke during his battle with Itachi, practically tasting revenge, except he's almost instantly defeated permanently. Then you see a snake that's obviously some sort of piece of him that can regenerate, but Itachi, right before he dies, uses his Amaterasu to completely incinerate it.
- How about his fight with Naruto. When he fought the Kyuubi form of Naruto, he got slashed in half only to have snakes close the gaping hole left in his body. When the Kyuubi chakra starts poisoning him he regurgitates a new body. When the shockwaves caused by Naruto weaken his first body he regurgitates yet another body. And then the grand finale after he gets supa lasered his body is broken in several new ways and his head is underneath the ground from the force of the blast. But his head just pops up from under the ground unharmed and swords a blazin. That's four in one fight off the top of my head.
- And when he fought Sasuke in the forest. He got pile-driven into a giant old tree and burned alive and still came back to vampire bite Sasuke
- Kishimoto seems to love this trope: In the Sasuke Retrieval Arc, both Neji and Choji are almost absolutely, positively dead after their fights. Choji has been beaten mercilessly with giant boulders, and Neji's opponent manages to hit him dead on with a 120% power, 360 degrees spinning arrow Of Doom. Their fights both end with them slouching on the ground, most definitely dead. Cut to later, when they are healed, albeit not-so-easily with a bit of medicine.
- For Choji, it's also worth noting that he ate a pill that would give him tremendous power, but would kill him shortly afterwards, which for some reason doesn't kill him afterwards.
- Bleach is full of these, on both sides but especially with the heroes. You'd think someone would die if you do the equivalent of running them through a paper shredder. Byakuya Kuchiki does this to two different characters. Neither dies. Even the one character Killed Off For Real in the early series is Not Quite Dead.
- Happens frequently enough with both protagonists and antagonists in the Hueco Mondo arc, one would think that the giant clouds of dust kicked up by the horrible attack du minute had incredible regenerative powers.
- Etemon in Digimon Adventure is sucked into a space-warping... warp... thing that was apparently destroyed, but managed to bide his time and evolve before coming back as Metal Etemon. Vamdemon (aka Myotismon) is shot through the chest by Angewomon, but survives in order to fulfill a prophecy and has to beaten by War Greymon and Metal Garurumon.
- And even then does Vamdemon survive—he's the Man Behind The Man... the Mon behind the man? in season two, having possessed Oikawa as the kids left for the Digital World right after thinking they'd done him in as Venom Vamdemon, emerging as final Big Bad in Digimon Adventure 02 in his One Winged Angel form of Belial Vamdemon, aka Malo Myotismon. Unfortunately, his reveal did not get a good reception by the fans.
- Probably because he was at the top of a really, really, lame implementation of the Sorting Algorithm Of Evil. Plus we were still peeved by the way they handled Ken after he was reformed from his Digimon Kaiser thing. And the way they had him defeated at the end of the series came across as pure cheese.
- Strange, most of the fen This Troper knows consider Toei's treatment of Ken (particularly after his Heel Face Turn) some of the best character writing in the franchise.
- "Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann" has one of its own when Kamina receives an unexpected attack from one of the Beastman Generals and is completely impaled by a giant glaive. After a bloodcurtling scream, the villain's triumphant laugh, and a look of horror on his comrade's faces, he somehow manages the strength keep moving and inspire Simon one last time as he leads them in the final attack against his would-be killer. He succeeds in eliminating his foe before finally subduing to eternal rest.
- In Godannar, this becomes Kouji Tetsuya's gimmick. His mech may be nearing a total wreckage, and he will suffer nasty wounds. But whenever someone claims that he's dead, he'll still appear alive and well and say, "I'm not dead...". Nobody cares if anybody listens to that.
- Humorously played with in Mnemosyne when Rin ambushes the Monster Of The Week in her office. She quickly guns down Rin without any hesitation, and hurries over and, being a doctor, checks her over to make sure she's dead before straightening up, sighing in relief, and going on with her business. She is thus quite terrified when Rin just gets back up after a minute.
- Case in point, Rin getting killed happens thrice an episode on average. She just happens to be immortal and thus, resurrects each and every time.
- Mad Bad Bull, a minor antagonist from Kiddy Grade, had a heavy metal crate dropped on him by Éclair and Foxy Fox with Artificial Gravity, but still managed to punch his way out of it.
- In Transformers Super God Masterforce, the first battle between Super Ginrai and Overlord ends with Ginrai apparently dead, while Overlord is unscathed and decides to obliterate the rest of the Autobots. However, at the very end, Ginrai refuses to die.
- One Piece has the Skypeian "god" Enel. During his fight against Wiper, Wiper actually manages to kill Enel with the dangerous Reject Dial. Too bad for him that Enel has the powers of the electric Devil Fruit, which automatically works like a Magical Defibrillator, restarting his heart. Cue round 2.
- Used and then averted in Seirei No Moribito. Balsa manages fake her death by sending her and Chagum careening over a cliff and into a valley filled with poisonous vapors, with their dead horse and straw dummies clearly visible. Because the vapors would kill anyone going down there before they'd reach the corpses, their pursuers are forced to declare them dead. They do come back later to double check once they've equipped themselves to handle the vapors, however.
- The second season of Gundam 00 has a version of this for episode 22-24. Ribbons Almark was shot by Regenne Regetta but as it turns out, his soul is actually in the Quantum Supercomputer Veda, and the body is just a puppet, plus he has spares. Later, both Regenne Regetta and Tiera Erde have been shot and their bodies are pretty much dead, but their consciousness lives on in Veda and actually severs Ribbons link to it, trapping him in his current body. When Setsuna F. Seiei sees the body of his friend, he proclaims his intention to avenge him, but Tiera then uses Veda to tell Setsuna not to kill him off yet.
- In Code Geass, Mao is riddled full of bullets, he comes back a few episodes later with a Handwave about Britannian medical science and how Lelouch should have commanded the soldiers to shoot to kill. It takes a bullet to the head to stop him once and for all. Near the end of the second season, the same thing happens to Cornelia, except she doesn't get shot in the head.
- In Clannad, Nagisa, Ushio, and Tomoya all fall under this, if we go by the Visual Novel True End and the TV anime's Gainax Ending.
- This happens to Shuda in Rave Master. While character in the manga do have a tendency to survive insane amounts of damage and be up and about as if it hadn't happened only two days later (which made it so weird when one of them actually did have to spend time in a hospital), cutting off your arm and falling at least 2000 feet into a forest is over the top. No explanation is given for how he survived too (not that one ever is).
- Thief King Bakura, from the final season of Yugioh gets locked in a tomb and supposedly falls into a deep dark pit... only to somehow escape and sneak back into the city.
- Fariy Tail loves this. Starting with Gerard, who got hit through god knows how many stories of a tower and most likely fused with etherion to send it into the sky which should have torn his body apart and the more recent Leon being shoved off a cliff by a guy with a bunch of bombs attatched to him and a huge explosion going off while they're latched together. It's Fairy Tail though, so the spoiler blocks might not even be necessary.
Comic Books
- What about Hammerhead in the Ultimate Marvel continuity? Masters this trope by having his skull exploded by Gambit then turns up some years later in an Ultimate Spider-Man comic. "He got better".
- Heck, the Hammerhead from the regular universe is pretty much king of this trope.
- Played with in Blue Beetle #33-34.
- The Phantom was the ultimate inversion of this, everytime the old Phantom kicks the bucket, a new one is chosen, usually his son or closest kin. This allows them to project the illusion to their enemies that the Phantom is immortal, though their friends know better. Defenders of the Earth, the late 80s early 90s show that also featured the Phantom as one of the titular Defenders, has a daughter and a brother who both want the role. How the daughter can masquerade as a male escapes me since the costume is form fitting. At least Phantom 2040 was more true to the original, albeit a spin off.
- It might be worth mentioning that it's canon in the original comic that there's been at least one female Phantom before...
- Roberto in Monster, though when he shows up again, we see that he was far from unscathed.
Fairy Tales
- Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. And all their numerous variants. Especially creepy in Neil Gaiman's adaptation of the former, "Snow, Glass, Apples", in which the huntsman really does remove Snow White's heart and give it to the queen. It just doesn't stop beating until Snow White goes into her coma - and when she wakes up, it starts again...
Film
- Inverted in Johnny Mnemonic. The Priest is blasted with EMP, frying most of his cybernetics, and is then electrocuted to a crisp. At the very end of the movie, he starts to rise from the floor, and a frightened gasp comes from Jane... only to reveal that his body is actually just being hauled up on a pulley. "Just garbage. Get rid of it."
- A nameless character apparently killed in the first scene of The Good The Bad And The Ugly comes back for revenge about two hours later, only to be shot more decisively.
- Naturally, Sheriff Jed Cooper— played by Clint Eastwood in High Plains Drifter, fares better upon coming back from the dead (although at the very end, it seems that the character may actually have been a ghost playing a cruel game on both his killers, and the people who allowed it).
- Marshal (not Sheriff) Jed Cooper is Clint's character in Hang 'Em High. The relevant character in High Plains Drifter is Marshal Jim Duncan. Second, Clint was "The Stranger", but not Jim Duncan; that role was played by Buddy Van Horn, who was Clint's stunt double on many occasions.
- Karl, Hans Gruber's second-in-command, in the original Die Hard.
- Until the sequel to The Dark Knight is released, This Troper will count both Ra's a'-Ghul and Two-Face as Not Quite Dead. Ra's had the weird inner meditation thing going at the point of death, and we weren't looking at Dent's body for long enough to see whether he's still breathing or not.
- Dent has been confirmed dead by Nolan.
- Keyword there: Dent.
- Nolan has told Aaron Eckhart, who acts both Dent and Two-Face, his services will no longer be needed
- Lampshaded in Scream: (Gale, Sid and Randy are looking at Billy's body) Randy: Careful. This is the moment when the supposedly dead killer comes back to life, for one last scare. (Billy starts to rise) Sidney Prescott: (shoots Billy) Not in my movie.
- Naturally, a lot of slasher films tend to do this. Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees routinely get their fair of stab wounds from the Final Girl before it's all over. Jason was eventually Killed Off For Real, but since then he came back from the dead and is even more unstoppable.
- In the backstory to the second Ghost Busters movie, Vigo the Carpathian had been poisoned, stabbed, shot, hung, stretched, disemboweled, drawn and quartered. Before his head died he uttered this prophetic warning: "Death is but a door, time is but a window. I'll be back."
- Monty Python And The Holy Grail is literally swimming with Not Quite Dead bodies, including the random able-bodied 'plague-sufferer' the quote on this page is taken from. It's also hilariously exploited in The Musical, Spamalot, with the song He Is Not Dead Yet.
Oh we're not yet dead, to Camelot we go
To enlist instead to try and earn some dough
And so although we should have stayed in bed
We're going off to war because we're not yet dead!
- An example of the scenario which this page is actually about appears at the climax of Iron Man.
- Army Of Darkness: "It's a trick. Get an axe."
- In Sin City, Bruce Willis' character knows that even when a death looks impossible to survive, one must always "confirm the kill".
- The comedy Freaked parodies this trope to death.
- Jason Statham in Crank. He falls out of an airplane, lands on a car, bounces off, hits the pavement, and then blinks. The sequel shows us that he's definitely still alive.
- The titular character of The Spirit.
- In the movie Ben 10: Race against Time, the Tennyson trio stumble across the seemingly mummified corpse of Constantine...right before he sits up and declares "I'm not dead!", scaring both Ben and Gwen. Grandpa Max is not surprised, as usual.
- Averted in the 1997 version of George of the Jungle. After a character falls from a bridge, the narrator reminds everyone that "Nobody dies in this story. They just get really big boo-boos."
- "Why do they call him Boris the Bullet Dodger?" "Because he dodges bullets!"
- The same can be said about Bullet Tooth Tony who survived an entire clip being unloaded into him in a flashback.
- Until the sequel to GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra is released, this troper will count Storm Shadow as not quite dead. More accurately, even if he didn't manage to pull of the typical ninja trick of crawling away while horribly wounded, the combination of freezing cold water and advanced medical nanotech might make it possible to resurrect him.
Literature
Live Action TV
Theatre
- The second act of Into The Woods reveals of The Mysterious Man, "I thought you were dead." "Not completely. Are we ever?" Of course, what he means by this is left ambiguous.
- At the end of Wicked Elphaba is revealed to be, in fact, quite water-insoluble.
Real Life
- (Possibly) Real life example: Rasputin was poisoned, shot, beaten, shot a couple more times, and had his body dumped in a river- and even then he only died from hypothermia.
- He must have survived drowning then to die of hypothermia, that's how - at the post-mortem - they knew he was alive when they put 'his body' in the river: there was water in his lungs!
- He also had his belly sliced wide open in a previous assassination attempt, eliciting a cry of ''"I have killed the Antichrist!"'' from his would-be murderer. He got better.
- Rapper 50 Cent laughs at your Instant Death Bullets.
- You mean the bullets that hit him mostly in the limbs, along with one through his cheek?
Tabletop Games
- The Shadowrun 4th Edition handbook advocates gamemasters using this trope:
"In general, if you as the gamemaster aren't ready for a [villain] to die yet, you should exploit any opportunity to cast doubt on the certainty of doom. ... As the old movie trope goes, if the heroes can't find the body, then the villain isn't necessarily dead."
- in D&D 4th edition several epic destinies have level 30 powers that cause a "dead" character to get back up there next turn/at the end of the fight/ the next day.
- The prevalence of ressurection spells in D&D generally make death a non-permanent affair. And even if there's no body to ressurect, you can always physically travel to one of several possible afterlives and find the dead comrade there, or just use a more powerful spell that doesn't need a body. Death never lasts in D&D.
Video Games
- Resident Evil loves playing with this trope.
- In Resident Evil Albert Wesker is impaled by the Tyrant, but shows up in every other game nonetheless.
- Not exactly. Wesker's resurrection, and subsequent Big Bad status were retconned into the plot of Code Veronica. Up until then he was not seen, and presumed dead.
- In the RE: Remake, the following absurdity can occur. You have to fight Lisa Trevor on a platform of some sort, surrounded by a huge pit on all sides. If you fall off, it's an instant death. Wesker backs you up by firing on Lisa. However, it's possible for Wesker to get hit by Lisa and fall into the pit. If that happens, he'll still somehow turn up none the worse for wear in the Lab final battle, with absolutely no explanation.
- According to the Code Veronica: Wesker's Report file - it turns out that Wesker planned this by injecting himself with some (unnamed) virus that would give him super speed, super strength, and even preserve his mind - but it could only be activated by him almost dying. Not even Capcom could believe something that ridiclous, so they then retconned their retcon by simply having him disappear during your battle with the Tyrant in one (apparently canon) ending of the Resident Evil Gamecube remake.
- Ada Wong in the sequel is presumed dead after either a nasty fall, or being electrocuted. She returns in Resident Evil 4 feeling much better. Seems, she was merely Pining for the fjords. Also, it's revealed in Resident Evil 3's epilogues that she survived.
- Even in that same game, about five minutes after this happens a shadowy female tosses down a rocket launcher to Leon while he's fighting the final boss.
- In the Monkey Island series, the grand villain LeChuck, who is actually a ghost in the first game and is seemingly destroyed at the end of it, comes back as a zombie, a demon, and a ghost/zombie/demon over the course of the next three games.
- In Cave Story this trope is important to the secret ending, when if you don't actually see professor Booster die, he survives and gives you an improved jetpack later on.
- Forum Community/MMORPG Gaia Online's storyline is notorious for this. Many of the main characters have been shot, dropped off freakishly tall towers, and then crushed by said tower, all in the same plot update. Every single person killed in that particular incident was later revealed to be alive and well in later updates. Two by use of Applied Phlebotinum, and the other two simply by turning out to be vampires. In fact, the characters ever to be Killed Off for Real are characters introduced solely for making the current Generic Horror Movie Parody plausible.
- This is used in the Unlimited Blade Works scenario of Fate Stay Night, when Archer carries this to ridiculous levels by first being cut off from any mana at all, then is stabbed through by Shirou, then taking several full-on attacks from Gilgamesh, finally culminating with him suddenly reappearing when he should have disappeared long ago, just in time to both save Rin and then finish off Gilgamesh, yet still managing to stay around long enough to have a good-bye talk with Rin. Talk about hard to get rid of...
- Also done to Lancer in the same route, who gets impaled on his own spear (which is supposed to cause certain death), but hangs around out of sheer willpower long enough to drive off an antagonist, save Rin, and set the entire place on fire once she leaves.
- Also Saber in Heavens Feel. This is not a good thing, however.
- M. Bison of the Street Fighter series has apparently been killed off thorough the series, only to come back in the next game. Chronologically his first death occurs in Street Fighter Alpha 3, in which his body is destroyed by the Psycho Drive, but his conscience survived and he receives a new host body for the Street Fighter II series, which doesn't have the same abilities that his "original" body from the Alpha series had. Apparently Bison's body is destroyed again at the end of Super Street Fighter II Turbo, this time by Akuma's "Raging Demon" technique, only to get another new host body for the Street Fighter IV series (which reveals that he has an entire factory of host bodies). Since IV is a prequel to Street Fighter III, where Bison doesn't show up, so it remains to be seen if he will be Killed Off For Real this time.
- In Army of Two, Phillip Clyde goes through this one a lot, to the point where ever after you kill him in the final boss battle, they Never Found The Body.
- In Final Fantasy IV, Scarmiglione comes back from the dead in a much more powerful and grotesque form after you beat him the first time on Mt. Ordeals, proclaiming that he, in no uncertain terms, will knock you all down!
- Multiple cases in World Of Warcraft:
- Illidan Stormrage, the Well Intentioned Extremist, was struck down earlier and left bleeding in the ground. However, we find out he did not die but the only consequence of this dramatic defeat was a sudden and complete change of personality.
- Magtheridon, a demon Illidan defeated and supposedly killed, is revealed to have been imprisoned instead. Admittedly, Illidan later used his blood to empower an army of enhanced orc soldiers.
- Maiev Shadowsong, the night elf warden defeated by Illidan, was also revealed to have been imprisoned instead of being killed, which makes even less sense since she is no use for him and the only reason she lived was to kill him anyways. Guess who ended up killing him?
- Worth noting is that Maiev was employed as Illidan's warden for his ten thousand year imprisonment. Small-minded as Illidan was he had the intent to do the same to her.
- In the comic about Varian Wrynn, it is revealed that assassin Garona Halforcen and Twilight Hammer leader Cho'Gall are still alive.
- Pikmin 2 had some enemies that, after they're defeated and left alone for a while, would slowly recover their health and eventually come back to life.
- A lot of Metal Gear antagonists, but the most notable ones are Vamp (a knife-throwing hypnotist with weird nanomachine immortality powers) and Liquid (A Made Of Iron Determinator), both of whom get beaten multiple times in a single game, but just won't stop.
- Super Metroid: Big Bad Mother Brain pulls this one off twice in the epic Final Battle. First, Mother Brain appears as it did in the original NES Metroid game — stuck in a glass tank, attached to various life support systems, incapable of attacking on its own, and apparent missile fodder. Once enough damage is done, the entire structure holding Mother Brain in place will be blown away, and the brain will crash to the ground, seemingly defeated... until it starts to rise up into the air, newly attached as a head to a gigantic grotesque body, and emits a horrible shriek at Samus, letting her and the player know that she won't go down quite so easily this time around. Second, the reformed Mother Brain proves to be too much for Samus to handle, but the eponymous Super Metroid shows up at the last second to save Samus from the brink of death and seemingly incapacitate Mother Brain, transforming it into the same sepia coloring that the player has seen from the rest of the Super Metroid's previous (deceased) prey, and starts restoring Samus to full energy. Unfortunately, as this is happening, the final boss BGM continues to play — already never a good sign that the foe you're facing is truly defeated — but just to hammer the trope in, suddenly some drool and puffs of smoke emit from Mother Brain's mouth... cue the upcoming Tear Jerker scene where the Metroid sacrifices itself in a last-ditch effort to stop the revitalized Mother Brain's advance, followed by Mother Brain's third (and final) asskicking from Samus.
Webcomics
Western Animation
- Kenny in South Park does this often in Season 1, only to be killed seconds later.
- In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, this occurs to the Shredder a grand total of four times—three if you count the occasion that was retconned into Back From The Dead.
- Stinkmeaner in The Boondocks dies in Grandads Fight, but in Stinkmeaner Strikes Back he beats the Devil's Martial Arts Gauntlet & gets sent back to Earth.
- In Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Satan sends MC Pee Pants back to Earth often, providing the only continuity the show has.
- In Family Guy's famous chicken fights the chicken is killed three times yet he always returns for more. Within a single fight (the first) he is seemingly beaten to death, only to attack Peter again seconds later.
- Shendu from Jackie Chan Adventures is killed off at the season one finale, and is assumed dead. The act of "killing" him off allows him to become a spirit and he returns in the body of Valmont. The rest of the series sees him being resealed in the demon underworld, reborn, resealed in his original state, revived, and final sealed off for good in another dimension. Note, he is never actually killed.
- In the first season finale of X-Men, the massive robotic Master Mold pulls a Chernabog and bursts out of a mountain, insisting it can never be destroyed, after seemingly being destroyed with the rest of the Sentinels by a massive explosion. This is the cue for Professor Xavier to fly in with the TNT-loaded Blackbird jet...
- Swindle in Transformers Animated was, at the end of "S.U.V", paralyzed and trapped in vehicle mode, which the Autobots allowed the Detroit Police to tow away with the stated goal of either selling him or stripping him down for parts, not even mentioning that the "SUV" was a Decepticon. In "Five Servos of Doom", he turns up alive and unharmed, though still stuck, Sentinel Prime having bought him from the impound lot (considering he's parts couldn't move, they probably weren't worth much).
- Near the end of Barbie And The Diamond Castle, one of Lydia's spells backfires on her and she disappears. The main characters finally reach the Diamond Castle and are about to undo all of Lydia's spells when guess who comes flying in the window?
- In Harvey Birdman Attorney At Law, Phil Ken Sebben
is Put On A Bus gets hit by a bus in Season 3. Then at the series finale: "Ha! Ha! Final Episode stunt casting!"
- Beautifully parodied on The Simpsons (of course) in their Bible Trilogy. A story called David and Goliath 2, an Affectionate Parody of silly actioners, has Ralph Wiggum's character die at one point pretty finally. Later in the story, he suddenly reappears anyway. Bart says "I thought you were dead!" All Ralph says is "Nope!" Absolutely no explanation is given for this.
Web Original
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