Resurrected Murderer

"When I was alive, I might have been a little naughty, but after they killed me, I became something much, much worse. The stuff nightmares are made of."

"THEY THREW YOU OUT OF HELL!!"

— Kaneda Shotaro, AKIRA

Fiction's full of murderers. Whether serial, spree, or otherwise, there are as many deviances as there are villains. However, whatever atrocities they commit, when they die you can rest assured the horror is over, right?

Except when it's not.

Something happens. Maybe they were into the occult. Maybe they were turned by a vampire. Maybe they escaped from Hell. Or maybe they were just so hateful and sadistic that The Power of Hate brought them back. Whatever happened, they're Back from the Dead and quickly start killing again.

This trope applies to any situation where a murderer is resurrected and keeps plying their trade as some kind of supernatural being or monster. Typically, they come back via supernatural means, but scientific means are possible too. Either way, they're just as depraved as they were in life, and now have the power to paint even more of the town red. Oftentimes they seek revenge on whoever stopped their first rampage but not always. It's most common in the Horror genre, as it gives the monster more personality and a semi-plausible reason for its rampage. Additionally, it makes them significantly harder to kill. After all, You Can't Kill What's Already Dead. If the character is killed enough and resurrects every time, they have Joker Immunity, though this only applies to works with multiple installments.

This trope does not apply to people who were normal in life and started murdering in death, nor does it apply to killers Faking the Dead to return. The character has to have been a murderer in life, die, and come back to continue killing. It also only applies to smaller-scale offences, so dictators and conquerors do not qualify, but lower-scale war criminals can.

Sub-Trope of Our Slashers Are Different and Evil Makes You Monstrous. Super-Trope of Apocalypse Hitler. Compare Demon of Human Origin and Vengeful Ghost, which are two ways such a character can return. Contrast Murder Into Malevolence, where the character was perfectly nice in life but goes evil after being killed. Also compare and contrast My Death Is Just the Beginning, which may overlap with this trope. Also may overlap with The Dead Guy Did It. If a Real Life killer is used, it overlaps with Beethoven Was an Alien Spy.

As a Death Trope, the examples below are Spoilers Off. You Have Been Warned!

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• AKIRA: Tetsuo's rampage in the first book of the manga is brought to an end when he starts going through withdrawal. After killing Yamagata and being cornered in a ruined warehouse by the JSDF, he reveals that he has an experimental psychic drug sitting right on his tongue. Swallowing it against the demands of Colonel Shikishima, he starts having a violent seizure and becomes unresponsive. However, just when he's about to be pronounced dead at the scene, he jolts back onto his feet, stronger than ever.
• Bleach: Shrieker, real name unknown, was a serial knife murderer who sadistically stabbed eight people to death, but was finally brought down when Yuuichi Shibata, the toddler son of his last victim, accidentally knocked him off a balcony. He returns in manga chapter 9/anime episode 4 as a Hollow, having torn Shibata's soul from his body and placed it in a parakeet, falsely promising to put him back if Shibata could evade him for four months. For his crimes in life, he is condemned to Hell by Ichigo's zanpakuto rather than being sent to the Soul Society.
• Dragon Ball: Frieza, a sadistic mass murderer on a universal scale, is brought back to life twice, first toward the beginning of the Resurrection 'F' saga via Earth's Dragon Balls, and at the end of the Universal Survival Saga of Dragon Ball Super. Each time, he became stronger, to the point that it is difficult to determine if Goku or Vegeta can put him down for good after he displayed his latest transformation at the end of the Granolah the Survivor Arc.
• F-Zero: GP Legend: Zoda was a criminal living in Ryu Suzaku's era in the past and the one responsible for trapping him in a coma. When Ryu reawakens, he finds out that Zoda has been revived from cryosleep by Black Shadow and Dark Million as a cyborg, and takes on the job to bring his old nemesis to justice.
• Fullmetal Alchemist: Barry the Chopper and the Slicer Brothers are imprisoned serial killers who were used as test subjects for alchemical experiments involving the soul. Their souls were removed from their original bodies and bound to suits of armor.
• In Inuyasha, Naraku uses the shards of the sacred jewel to bring seven mercenaries back to undeath. These were feared during their lifetime, especially their leader Bankotsu, and they cruelly killed many people. When they become undead, they are much more powerful than before. Two of them are killed comparatively quickly, but the other five prove to be a problem for the protagonists.
• Rave Master: During the Doryu arc, the gang faces off against Cookie Crusher, a murderer with over a thousand kills who was executed fifteen years prior. Doryu resurrected him with necromancy to serve as one of his lackeys. He's defeated when Haru blows him out of the floating fortress they were fighting in, exposing Cookie Crusher to sunlight and causing him to disintegrate.

Comic Books

• Batman: Detective Aaron Radmuller, from Gotham County Line, was a Killer Cop and Serial Killer who would wipe out entire families, even the children. Radmuller did this as part of a ritual where he tricked Batman into killing him. Radmuller revived upon death as a zombie-like figure with control over any who had passed in Gotham and used them as his personal army of monsters to attack.
• Hack/Slash is based around Slasher Movie style undead serial killers, or "slashers", with the initial implication that you can come back as a slasher just through being deranged and evil enough. It is eventually revealed that the potential to become a slasher is hereditary in any descendant of the members of the original Classical Greek-era Black Lamp cult, due to the effects on the gene line of the "black ambrosia" drug that they abused.
• Judge Dredd: Edward Bernardo was a human serial killer who felt "cheated" when the Dark Judges took over MC-1 during Necropolis and sought out Judge Death in a suicidal attempt to kill him. Death decided not to execute Bernardo permanently and instead gifted him immortality so he would continue killing in his name. Decades later, Bernardo is still at large and regularly claiming new victims.
• The Nail: In JLA: Another Nail, Batman begins to suspect that the Joker, whom he killed in the previous story, has somehow come back to life. At the climax, it emerges that the Joker is indeed alive again, as a group of demons who found his soul in hell decided to use him as an agent of chaos on earth. However, the ever-unpredictable Joker proves more trouble than he's worth even to them, as he takes advantage of the fact that his new body is made of magic to shapeshift and manifest various powers, which forces the demons to use so much magic to sustain his form that they lose control of him. Of course, he can't resist going after Batman again, which leads to his downfall.
• Spawn: Subverted. Al Simmons was an amoral Black Ops killer in life, and is resurrected by a demon to continue serving Hell on Earth, but he uses the opportunity to become an Anti-Hero.
• The Unfunnies: Comic book creator Troy Hicks raped and murdered eight children before being arrested. He escapes the death penalty by using an occult ritual to switch places with a character in his comic, and promptly twists his world from Funny Animal wholesomeness to a Dystopia of sex and violence with him as its god.

Fan Works

• Light Yagami being resurrected after the end of the series, either as a human or a shinigami, is a common premise in Death Note fanfics. Examples with their own pages include Apples Equals Cyanide Equals Light and War Without End.
• The Mountain and the Wolf: The Wolf's victims are resurrected as hideously deformed Champions of Chaos by their respective Chaos Gods, including sadistic nobles and war criminals Ramsay Bolton and Gregor Clegane. However, the Wolf has just as much contempt for them as he did when they were alive, and quickly slaps down any attempt at rebellion from them. Ramsay in particular is threatened with total sensory deprivation (the worst punishment possible for a Slaaneshi Sense Freak), and is given a logistics job instead of fighting (which results in him being handed over to Sigvald for punishment when he screws that up).

Films — Live-Action

• Child's Play: "Charles Lee Ray, the "Lakeshore Strangler", uses Hollywood Voodoo to transfer his body into a Good Guy Doll at a toy store after being shot. The doll starts calling himself "Chucky".
• Daughters of Darkness (1971): Elizabeth Báthory bathed in virgin blood to stay beautiful forever, eventually becoming a full-fledged vampire.
• The Exorcist III: James Venamun, aka the Gemini Killer was a multiple murderer who carved a Gemini symbol into the hands of his murder victims. Venamun's spirit became a body-swapping demonic entity upon his death. Now the Gemini killer mutilates and murders people as a spirit like he did well alive.
• This is what happens in Fear Street. A curse hits a chosen human, and he then kills various other humans until someone stops and kills him (usually he's shot by the police). But the curse also allows murderers who have already been killed to return. These then have superhuman physical strength and a fast regeneration factor.
• The First Power. A psychic helps the police capture a ritualistic serial killer, on condition that he not get the death penalty. They break their word which is unfortunate because the ritual murders he committed give him the power of immortality (the titular First Power) once his spirit is freed from his body.
• Friday the 13th: Jason Voorhees spends the first part of the series as a living but savage murderer. After he's killed in the fourth film, he's brought back as a zombie by lightning in Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives.
• The Frighteners: The Grim Reaper that is killing people turns out to be the ghost of an executed serial killer named Johnny Bartlett. His equally deranged girlfriend used Ouija Boards to summon him back from Hell, and now he's continuing his quest to become the most prolific murderer in history.
• Ghost in the Machine: Karl Hochmann, a.k.a. the Address Book Killer, is critically wounded in a random car crash while on his way to kill Terri and her son. A freak electrical strike while he's in an MRI machine fries his body but also creates a "digital imprint" of Hochmann's mind, creating a Virtual Ghost who can travel through Cyberspace.
• The Gingerdead Man: Millard Findlemeyer was a criminal who attacked a diner and killed two of Sarah Leigh's family members. After his arrest, he was executed and cremated, with his ashes being sent to his Wicked Witch mother, who mixes the ashes with an enchanted gingerbread spice mix. She leaves the mix on the doorstep of the Leigh family's bakery, and they decide to use it to make a gingerbread man, only for it to be brought to life, reviving Millard, who proceeds to go on a vengeful killing spree.
• A Haunting at Silver Falls: Anne Sanders, the Serial Killer who was responsible for the deaths of the Dahl Twins and Jordan's mother (who also happened to be her identical twin), is killed at the end of the first movie when Jordan and the Dahl Twin's ghosts work together. She comes back in the sequel to continue her murder spree, this time tormenting a man named Jack into murdering in her name. After she gets killed for a second time, Jack also gets killed, and he also returns as a ghost to presumably continue the cycle.
• I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer: The Fisherman, having been killed in the second film, returns as a Vengeful Ghost killing anybody with a Dark Secret.
• Jack Frost (1997): While taking notorious murderer Jack Frost to be executed, the prison transport crashes into a truck containing DNA-altering chemicals. The chemicals melt Jack into nearby snow, but his consciousness moulds the snow into a snowman to go after the cop who arrested him.
• Discussed but ultimately subverted in Jigsaw with rumors about John Kramer, the infamous Jigsaw Killer, having returned from the dead when a new spree of killings begins around a decade since the events of Saw 3D (wherein John was killed midway through), which kickstarts the film's plot. Come The Reveal at the end, it's shown via a Flashback-Montage Realization that it was an Of Corpse He's Alive ruse made by a new killer.
• Monsturd: Jack Schmidt was an inmate who tried to escape prison, only to fall into a vat of acid and sewage, resulting in him being transformed into a monster made of feces, who then goes on a killing spree by crawling up people's toilets.
• Nightbreed: The Psycho Psychologist serial killer Dr. Decker is killed by Boone at the end of the film, only to be resurrected as another nightbreed by the corrupted priest Ashberry. For extra irony points, Decker hated the nightbreed and had sought to wipe them out.
• A Nightmare on Elm Street: Freddy Krueger was a serial child murderer burned alive by the parents of his victims. Making a deal with the Dream Demons, he stalks the dreams of their other children to kill them in real life.
• Polaroid: Roland Joseph Sable was a photography teacher who well alive had four teenagers brutally murdered. He was eventually killed but his evil spirit remains and is now attached to his camera. In the present, Sable begins killing once more as a malevolent spirit.
• Shocker: Horace Pinker makes a Deal with the Devil to bind his spirit to electricity, so he can use it to possess people and claim more victims.
• The Made-for-TV Movie Terror At London Bridge depicts Jack the Ripper in 1888 dying at London Bridge after he falls into the River Thames. Then, in 1985, after the bridge was moved to Lake Havasu, Arizona, the last original stone used to rebuild the London Bridge is finally laid. Soon thereafter, murders begin to happen in the area, and David Hasselhoff correctly deduces that the ghost of Jack the Ripper has revived.
• Thir13en Ghosts: While most of the ghosts were actually normal people who didn't become violent until after they came back as ghosts, the Jackal and the Juggernaut were both Ax-Crazy serial killers before their deaths. The Juggernaut in particular accumulated 40 additional kills before Cyrus and his team trapped him in the opening.
• The Traveler: "Mr. Nobody" is revealed to be the spirit of a dead child killer, supernaturally brought back to life through the sheer hatred of the cops who caught him and his desire to kill them all.
• Uncle Sam: Sam Harper was a Sociopathic Soldier who joined the military just so he could kill more people For the Evulz, and is implied to have raped his own sister when they were younger. After dying in combat, his corpse is placed in a coffin and delivered to his sister and her family. For reasons left unexplained, Sam rises from his coffin as a zombie at midnight on the Fourth of July, steals an Uncle Sam mascot costume, and proceeds to go on a killing spree, targeting anyone who disrespects America.
• Halfway through Willy's Wonderland, it's revealed that the killer animatronics that the Janitor had been fighting house the souls of eight serial killers that also worked as staff at the titular restaurant, with the Willy animatronic in particular hosting the restaurant's founder, Jerry Robert Willis. Willis and his associates were part of a Satanic cult in life, and they performed a suicide ritual to transfer their souls so that they could escape from the authorities.

Gamebooks

• Moon Runner: Conrad Zaar used to be a man-orc and a murderer who died sometime in the backstory. But the main villain, Karam Gruul, have necromantic abilities and revives Conrad as one of his main enforcers, with the revived murderer now spending every scene clad in a hockey mask for good measure.

Literature

• Benny Rose, the Cannibal King: A possible origin for Benny Rose that is given is that he was a sadistic child serial killer in life who eventually became a cannibalistic slasher killer in death. That said emphasis is given on it being a possibility as the ending implies just as much that Benny may have once genuinely been a normal person before his transformation.
• Cujo: There is some implication in the novel that Cujo, after contracting rabies, was also possessed by the vengeful spirit of Frank Dodd, a Serial Killer Cop from Stephen King's previous novel The Dead Zone. Sheriff Bannerman certainly believed so as he was being mauled to death by the rabid St. Bernard, and there are other bits of text that highly imply Dodd's influence over the diseased animal.
• In The Devil's Bed by Doug Lamoreux, Francois de Rais was a French satanist serial killer and a member of the The Knights Templar. He revives in the present day as a bloodthirsty undead vampire.
• The Diviners (2012): In the first novel, John Hobbes murdered over 10 people for a ritual to become "The Beast" and end the world but was executed before he could kill enough people for the ritual, and finally returnins decades later as a ghost to complete the ritual and becomes known as the "Pentacle Killer".
• Dove Keeper: The Big Bad is none other than Gilles de Rais himself. Gilles in life was a Serial Killer of children who after his death was sent to hell. He returns as a demon and plans to bring Joan of Arc back to life by killing hundreds of kids in the present.
• In Floor Four by A. Lopez Jr., Henry Coleman was a serial killer known as "the Mangler", who managed to bind his spirit to the abandoned hospital he died in. He now walks the halls, killing anyone he can, and later manages to gain the power to stalk victims outside of the hospital, too.
• An issue of the German horror series Geisterjaeger John Sinclair shows a high-ranking member of the Russian mafia in prison. He killed several people. And even in prison he murders a fellow inmate because he doesn't feel he respects him enough. As the story progresses, he is transformed into a ghoul. However, his undead existence only lasts a few hours before he is killed again. Ironically, he's committed more murders as a human than as a ghoul.
• Gone: Drake, a sadistic teenager with a whip for a hand with which he likes to use to torture people to death, is killed in the second book, but his severed whip hand gets attached to Brittney, a girl who has the power to come Back from the Dead. As a result, he ends up resurrected while Sharing a Body with Brittney.
• Grave Peril: In life, Leonid Kravos was a drug dealer, cult leader, and multiple murderer. He was arrested by Harry Dresden and Michael Carpenter and sent to prison where he committed suicide. Kravos' evil spirit returned as "Nightmare" which started to target anyone involved in arresting him, eventually culminating in him torturing Michael's pregnant wife.
• Horrorstör: Warden Josiah Worth was a horrifying case of Wardens Are Evil while he was alive, as he was responsible for the wholesale torture and murder of the inmates kept under his care. In the present, Josiah is an evil spirit who traps the souls of his victims in horrible unending pain and murders the employees of the furniture store Orsk to add to his collection.
• I Shall Wear Midnight: In life, The Cunning Man was a sadistic witch-finder who would hunt and have witches burnt alive. He met his end when he ended up burned alive with one of his victims. The Cunning Man is now a malevolent spirit who continues to kill witches.
• Mercy Thompson: Cory Littleton started off as a wicked killer of innocents even when he was human. Cory was eventually transformed into a vampire and as a member of the undead, he now has taken to escalating his killing spree across the city.
• One Grave at a Time (Night Huntress #6): Inquisitor Heinrich Kramer, a witch hunter and official who raped several women and burned them at the stake as witches, was knocked off his horse to his death centuries before the novel starts. In the present day, continues driving people to suicide while he is a ghost, and whenever he becomes tangible on All Hallows' Eve, rapes women before burning them at the stake as he did in life.
• The Otherworld: In life, Andrei Duchev was a Repulsive Ringmaster who mutilated innocent people into horrible abominations who were in horrific pain. His crimes were so severe that his victims were granted a Mercy Kill and he was branded one of the worst serial killers ever before his execution. Andrei was sent to a prison in purgatory where he feigned that he had reformed of evil. They released him so he could hunt the demonic serial killer known as the Nix. Instead, it backfired and Andrei now a malevolent spirit became her serial killer buddy in raking up new atrocities in undeath.
• An early example in Clark Ashton Smith's short story "The Testament of Athammaus" (part of his Hyperborea Cycle of stories, published in Weird Tales). The notorious outlaw Knygnathin Zhaum, rumoured to be some sort of Semi-Divine Humanoid Abomination, is finally captured and brought before Athammaus, the royal executioner. Athammaus recounts how every time he cut off Zhaum's head, the killer would come back to life a day or two later in an increasingly inhuman form, before eventually becoming a full-on Blob Monster. The story ends with the entire populace and government abandoning the city.

Live-Action TV

• American Horror Story:
  • American Horror Story: Murder House: After setting Larry on fire and committing a Columbine-like shooting, Tate is killed by SWAT in his bedroom. As a result, his ghost remains in the Murder House, where he becomes Rubber Man, raping and murdering Chad and Patrick, and murdering Vivian, until Violet's love redeems him... maybe.
  • American Horror Story: Hotel: In life, James Patrick Marsh was a Serial Killer who built a Hell Hotel to torture and murder as many as he could. Upon his death, Marsh became an Evil Mentor to other future serial killers (his apprentices include John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Aileen Wuornos, Richard Ramirez, and the Zodiac Killer). Even as a ghost, Marsh remains a murderous monster who takes pride in hurting people.
  • American Horror Story: 1984: Everyone who dies at Camp Redwood is resurrected as a ghost, which includes murderers like Montana, who was working with Richard Ramirez to kill Brooke. However, ghosts undergo a Face–Heel Turn due to how long they're alive, and it allows them to avoid it with Ramirez himself, repeatedly killing him in an almost endless loop to stop him from being able to resurrect (as they all were) and go to kill others.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Zachary Kralik was once an Ax-Crazy cannibalistic serial killer who took the lives of a dozen women. Kralik was sired as a vampire and become a member of the undead. Kralik remains just as violent and psychopathic as a vampire.
• Charmed (1998): Jackson Ward was a serial killer who was executed at Alcatraz. His spirit became attached to the prison, but he's released in the present due to the work of a demonic soul collector named Charon. Ward begins killing anyone who sent him to prison as payback.
• Cheo Yong: "Memories of Murder" features Chong Nam-ho, a vicious misogynistic Serial Killer who was active in the late 1990s, who murdered women by snapping their necks, then carved their victim number into the roof of their mouth. Executed by the lead detective following killing a kindhearted care worker, Nam-ho's evil spirit returns two decades later by possessing a hapless camper. Now using his body, Nam-ho carries on his killing spree intending to carry on murdering for all eternity.
• Kamen Rider Wizard: Phantoms are monsters that are created when an innocent person suffers Death by Despair and comes back as a new sociopathic monster. This process normally renders Death of Personality to its host, with the only exception being Sora Takigawa aka Gremlin Phantom. Sora even when human was a Serial Killer who killed women that looked like the girlfriend who dumped him. When he was turned into a Phantom, Sora's original personality was able to survive the transformation as he's already pure evil, so wasn't affected by the Death by Despair.
• Legends of Tomorrow:
  • "Slay Anything" features Freddy Meyers a convicted Serial Killer, responsible for murdering seven of his former classmates at his prom during the 1980s, who is executed by electric chair right on the night of his twenty-year high school reunion and sent back from hell as an Encore with telekinetic powers to continue massacring his former classmates. Or so it would seem; in reality, it's Freddy's mother Kathy who murdered Freddy's classmates and let her son take the fall, having a heart attack at watching him die, it's her who's returned from the dead to kill his classmates blaming them for taking her son away from her.
  • In "The Great British Fake Off", to secure the final piece of the Loom of Fate, Lachesis steals a large collection of Astra's soul coins and dispatches several of history's most infamous killers (Jack the Ripper, Brutus, Black Caesar, and Bonnie and Clyde) as Encores to retrieve it, promising whoever gives it to her freedom from damnation.
• Sleepy Hollow:
  • "Go Where I Send Thee": During the Revolutionary War the Pied Piper was a vicious mercenary hired by Daniel Lancaster to deal with the British soldiers who had occupied his home and were harassing his daughters. The Piper's enchanted music lured the soldiers to their deaths; however, Daniel Lancaster betrayed and killed the Piper when he arrived for his payment. Unbeknownst to Daniel the Piper had sold his soul to Moloch, allowing him to return from death as a demon. Furious he haunted the Lancaster family, taking away a female Lancaster child on her tenth birthday every generation, to starve to death and then make a new flute from her bones.
  • "Mama": Nurse Gina Lambert was originally a seemingly kindly and supportive psychiatric nurse during the 1950s, however, in secret she was a Angel of Mercy who was responsible for the deaths of 28 of her patients, due to viewing them as too weak to bear the misery of life. Caught, she was executed by electric chair in 1958. However, as the hospital she worked in was built on a specific ley line, Moloch was able to recruit her and send her spirit back as a demonic creature. It being Gina who he used to torment Lori Roberts into insanity. Her spirit continuing to haunt her old hospital, Gina carried on her killing spree by subtly guiding her patients to kill themselves.
• Supernatural: Amongst the many types of ghost the brothers face throughout the series, Violent Spirits stand out for being the spirits of the cruel and the vicious who carry on their crimes in death. This coupled with the fact that ghosts' powers are fuelled by rage often makes them especially dangerous.
  • "Hook Man": In life, Jacob Karns was a fanatic preacher who was so enraged at the town's red-light district, that he went on to murder and mutilate thirteen prostitutes using his silver hook. Following his execution his spirit returned multiple times feeding off repressed emotions, carrying on his killing spree of those he deemed immoral.
  • "Route 666": During the 1960s Cyrus Dorian was a vicious racist who would abduct black people in his truck, drive them out of town, and then beat them to death. He also set a church on fire when his girlfriend left him for a black man, killing the children's choir. His attacks carried on until one of his would-be victims managed to overpower and kill him. Decades later, the demolition of his family home reawakens Cyrus, whose ghost manifested as his truck seeking vengeance on all those involved in covering up his death.
  • "Provenance": Melanie Merchant was a budding sociopath during the early 1900s. She murdered her family with a straight razor, and then did the same to her adopted family before killing herself, leaving her stepfather to take the fall for the deaths. After death, her ghost haunted her stepfamily's painting carrying on killing its new owners.
  • "No Exit" features the ghost of none other than H.H. Holmes; a new series of flats being built upon the site where Holmes was executed reawakens his ghost, who carries on his killing spree by dragging into the sewers beneath the building.
  • "Folsom Prison Blues": Dolores Glockner was a nurse at Green River County Detention Centre infirmary during the 1970s. Driven by an utter hatred of all criminals Dolores would abuse her position to murder any inmates who came under her care, poisoning them to induce heart attacks. Finally killed by the inmates during a prison riot in 1976, the prison reopening the old cell block she was murdered in (it having been closed due to the damage by the riot) in 2007 reawakens Dolores, who carried on her killing spree now inducing heart attacks in inmates she targeted.
  • "Of Grave Importance": Whitham Van Ness was a formerly wealthy man during the late 1800's seeing his family house turned into a brothel, as such he became a Serial Killer who slit the throats of the prostitutes who worked there, climaxing in him killing his own fiancé and framing the handyman for his murders. After death Whitham discovered he had power over the ghosts haunting his home, and fed off them, allowing him to remain lucid and strong whilst they deteriorated into "ghost Alzheimer's", then finally oblivion. To ensure he never ran out of victims, Whitman would murder anyone who ventured into his home, racking up hundreds of victims.
  • "Advanced Thanatology": Dr. Avery Meadows was a psychiatrist during the 1960s, who whilst publicly claiming to care for his patients, would secretly lobotomise them. Taking the survivors back to his home, Meadows would carry on torturing and experimenting upon them until his efforts finally killed them. Executed for his crimes, Meadows' ghost carried on haunting his house, tied to the Plague Doctor masks he wore during his torture sessions. Following two teenagers breaking into his home and stealing a mask, Meadows' spirit haunted them both to carry on his grisly treatment.
• Tales from the Crypt: In life, Ada Ritter from "Television Terror" was the seemingly kindly caretaker of a boarding house that rented rooms for the elderly, but in truth, she was truthfully a vicious Serial Killer who slaughtered at least twelve of her tenants in the name of "greed, lust or bloodthirst". Stealing their social security checks, she would dismember their bodies with a chainsaw and hide them in the basement. Committing suicide, her evil spirit continued to haunt the boarding house along with her victims. When supernatural investigator Horton Rivers decides to host the latest episode in her house, she terrorises them, climaxing in her killing Horton's cameraman, then maiming him with her chainsaw and hanging him to death.
• Twin Peaks: Killer BOB's possible origin. MIKE confesses that he and BOB "went killing together", but when MIKE became remorseful, he cut off his own arm to end his murderous impulses; when BOB refused to repent as well, MIKE killed him. From there, it seems that BOB's consciousness entered the Black Lodge, turning him into a twisted spirit with the ability to possess human hosts and make them his puppets. However, The Return implies that he may have always been a supernatural being instead of a garden-variety psychopath.

Mythology

• In European folklore, a murderer could rise as a vengeful undead creature such as a vampire. As such, it was considered important to bury executed murderers at the crossroads, which would confuse the newly risen monster and prevent it from finding its way to new victims.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons: Unrepentant mass murderers sometimes rise from the dead as mohrgs, skeletal Omnicidal Maniacs with a paralytic touch and the power to enslave their victims as zombies.
• Pathfinder: Chaotic Evil mortals who sufficiently stain their souls as assassins or serial killers can become babaus, demons of murder, in death, a transformation that makes them even more vicious, elaborate and deadly killers than they were in life. Under typical conditions, the souls of the deceased lose all memories of and attachment to their former lives, but some rare exceptions retain their personalities as they transition into the afterlife and become outsiders. One of the most notable examples of this in the setting is the legendary serial killer Mangvhune, the Temple Hill Slasher, whose bloody crimes caused him to become a babau after his execution. In the Hell's Rebels adventure path, he returns to his home city of Kintargo to pick up his reign of terror where he left off.
• Sentinels of the Multiverse: Serial killer turned Psycho Serum-powered villain Jack Donovan, AKA Spite, after many, many fakeout deaths, is finally killed only to return as the undead Spite: Agent of Gloom following a deal with Gloomweaver.
• Warhammer: Khorne the Blood God has a history of bringing back particularly bloodthirsty warriors to fight for him when they're killed.
  • In Warhammer Fantasy, Valkia the Bloody was a Champion of Chaos who fought her way through the northern wastelands in an effort to reach Khorne's fortress but fell along the way. Khorne raised her from the dead as his chosen Champion, now functioning as the local equivalent of a Valkyrie.
  • In Warhammer 40,000:
    • Khârn the Betrayer is a Blood Knight so murderous he's said to be brought back from the dead by Khorne because he's so good at spilling blood.
    • Warboss Tuska was an ork always looking for the best fight. He led his Waaagh! through the Eye of Terror, slaughtering entire worlds until they reached one ruled by a daemon prince of Khorne. The Blood Prince defeated them in battle, but as Tuska pulled off a Dying Moment of Awesome (combined with Defiant to the End and Groin Attack), Khorne resurrects them to fight anew every day, which suits all parties just fine.
    • Captain Lucius of the Emperor's Children was both a Master Swordsman and a petulant, childish Pretty Boy who became addicted to pain and scarifying himself, and committed horrible murderous acts against both civilians and Space Marines once his Legion became corrupted by Slaanesh. He was eventually killed, but Slaanesh gifted him with a special resurrective ability. If his killer feels any satisfaction in the act, no matter how small, then they will slowly and agonizingly transform into Lucius, with their soul trapped for eternity as a screaming face on his armor.

Video Games

• AFK Arena: Several of the Graveborn weren't exactly saints in life.
  • Fane delighted in flaying half-animal Ya alive and then killing them to sell in a butcher's shop. His reputation resulted in him being assigned to be a Torture Technician in charge of political prisoners during a war, eventually including his own general. In death, he serves Thoran, the evil king of the Graveborn, as his personal prison warden, where he torments the souls of any Graveborn who disobey.
  • Edwin was Thoran's brother, and organized a coup that killed him, his closest guards, and his family. It was his massacring that drove Thoran from The Good King he was in life to the undead tyrant he became. Now, Edwin is raising an opposing, but no better, undead army.
  • Nara was one of the most successful and feared gangsters and slavers in the Wretched Hive of Rustport. As a Graveborn, she's part of a pirate crew.
• Death Flush: The Toilet Seat Killer, an Expy of Freddy Kreuger, was known for murdering people in the restrooms with a weaponized toilet seat. His last victim was the main protagonist's grandfather. According to some newspapers at the beginning, the serial killer had already been killed before the events of the game, but then on one Halloween night, the protagonist Ronnie is trapped in his bathroom and is later kidnapped by the undead Toilet Seat Killer to be brought to his bathroom dimension. Said killer has an appropriate Toilet Humor line for this:
  "Dying was step one and now you're number two!"
• Played with in the Harvester sidequest chain in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. The serial killer known as the Harvester is in fact dead, but while on death row, he volunteered for a medical research project. Said project involved curing a patient's social phobias using aspects of the Harvester's personality uploaded onto a chip and implanted in the patient's brain. Unfortunately, the portions of his personality responsible for his murderous impulses were also uploaded...
• Five Nights at Freddy's has William Afton, a Serial Killer who murdered multiple children. In the third game, he's chased into a springlock suit (a suit capable of being used as both a mascot costume and an animatronic, but is prone to resetting and crushing/impaling whoever's wearing it) by the vengeful souls of his victims. The suit switches into animatronic mode shortly after Afton puts it on; while he gets killed by the robot parts snapping back into place, he also ends up possessing the suit. Afton is eventually unwittingly added to a horror attraction and roams it as a zombie animatronic rabbit called Springtrap.
• House of the Dead: After his death at the hands of the Magician, Doctor Curien, the main villain of the original game, was resurrected as the final boss of the third game, the Wheel of Fate.
• One of the bosses in the first Nightmare Creatures game is Jose Manuél, a Jack the Ripoff ex-serial killer sentenced to the electric chair before the game's events, only for the villain Adam Crowley to have Manuel revived with his murderous instincts intact. He's now one of Crowley's most dangerous minions, and is fought in a blood-stained slaughterhouse.
• Wild ARMs 3: Janus Cascade spends the first half of the game as The Rival to Virginia's crew, characterized by being a slimy Bad Boss that will lie, kill and steal as necessary. Once The Prophets reveal themselves, however, Janus is brought back in a new Demonic form that can weaponize rainbows and even duplicate itself. Janus quickly gets to work repeatedly trouncing the protagonists and working on weakening his "masters" one-by-one to usurp their operation from them. He manages to get the entire group on a silver platter and only fails because Siegfried was lucky enough to intercept him at the worst conceivable time.
• World of Warcraft: Stalvan Mistmantle was a Private Tutor who became infatuated with his young student and who butchered her and her beau with an axe when she rejected his advances. Turned into an undead through unknown means, he still stalks the lands of Duskwood, hunting for more female victims.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 3 has the Sociopathic Soldier known as Blackblaze Dirk, who used Wolverine Claws that he personally crafted to decapitate anyone he came across, friend and foe. He'd then preserve their heads in containers, and keep them hidden. After he died, Dirk was able to make a Deal with the Devil and became Moebius D, the game's Starter Villain. Upon learning that his "collection" was still where he last left it, he decided to add the entire world to his collection.

Visual Novels

• In his first life, Yukimasa from The House in Fata Morgana is a Serial Killer whose crimes include cutting the arm off and eventually aiding in the death of a young girl named Morgana. As she dies, Morgana curses him to be reconstructed as a beast who is even more bloodthirsty than he was before. Her curse results in Yukimasa being reborn hundreds of years later, with his sadistic urges causing him so much Sanity Slippage that he becomes a feared beast who brutally murders almost every person he comes across.
• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations: Dahlia Hawthorne is a Serial Killer who murdered her half-sister and tricked her mentor into committing suicide before Mia Fey gets her sent to death row for electrocuting her ex-boyfriend. During the final case, she's brought back to life by having her spirit channeled, where she enacts her revenge on Mia by murdering Misty Fey and attempting to frame Maya for her murder.

Web Animation

• PONY.MOV: In MAGIC.MOV, Twilight Sparkle attempts to resurrect Rainbow Dash using an incantation, but she instead resurrects Wolflor, who proceeds to team up with Discord to lay waste to Ponyville.
• Toon Sandwich: Parodied in the trailer spoof for Jurassic World — apparently, the Indominus rex was made by combining the DNA of a T. rex, leftover tech from Skynet, and the recovered brain of Ted Bundy.

Web Original

• The Something Awful series "Monstergeddon", which is premised on an online message board for monsters organizing an annual tournament for killing humans, introduced "The Masked Slasher" (Username: "MaskedSlasher"). Initially, he was a controversial figure in the community for not being a real monster—just a regular human being that Howard the Wolfman ("Dogballz69") insists is merely a Serial Killer. During the 2011 Monstergeddon tournament, Howard kills the Masked Slasher with a shotgun (the tournament didn't take place during a full moon), but by the 2012 tournament, the Masked Slasher returns after having been resurrected by an evil cult to serve their god, "Vthuchu of the Three Antediluvian Ones." Consequently, he comes back to the message board to boast that he is finally a real monster and talks like a religious nut.
• Unsounded: When the sadistic child-molesting gangster Starfish dies near a ghost-powered Magitek superweapon, it ensnares fragments of his soul. The weapon later regurgitates them as a deranged Blob Monster fixated on what it remembers of its old goals, especially claiming Sette as his "payment".

Western Animation

• Courage the Cowardly Dog: Benton Tarantella was a serial killer who posed as a film director to lure aspiring actors into his clutches. After killing 12 people, he is caught and dies in jail, but somehow comes back to life as a flesh-eating zombie. In "Everyone Wants to Direct", he aims to resurrect his former partner Errol Van Volkheim, who has been buried under the protagonist's house, setting the episode's conflict into motion.
• Justice League: In a flashback in "The Terror Beyond", the mobster Cyrus Gold is shown smiling when he opens fire against the police and uses a woman as a human shield. After being betrayed and killed by his partners, he is cursed with a powerful gris-gris and buried in a mystic swamp, where the two sources of magic combine to reanimate him as a soulless zombie. Now calling himself Solomon Grundy, he continues committing crimes due to retaining his former self's lust for wealth.
• King of the Hill: Spoofed In-Universe by "Joe Sixpack", a villain in Luanne's Manger Babies puppet show. She explains that Joe went to Hell after killing himself in a drunk driving accident, then was kicked out of Hell for crashing Satan's car while drunk. He now roams the Earth as an undead revenant, giving rides to the unsuspecting so he can crash with them.
• The Simpsons: The "Treehouse of Horror" series of Halloween episodes has had a few examples over the years.
  • "Treehouse of Horror VI": In the segment "Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace" (a parody of A Nightmare on Elm Street), Groundskeeper Willie starts killing the children of Springfield in their dreams as a supernatural spectre in revenge after the people of the city ignored him burning to death.
  • "Treehouse of Horror IX": In the segment "Hell Toupee", Snake Jailbird is sentenced to death by electric chair after burning down an orphanage, blowing up a bus of nuns, and smoking in a no smoking area. Homer gets a transplant of Snake's hair which then manages to possess Homer with Snake's personality who then kills the witnesses to Snake's last infraction, Apu, and Moe, Bart was another witness and the possessed Snake-Homer tries to kill Bart but Bart manages to get through to Homer who rips the hair transplant off. The hair then gets up itself and tries to kill Bart until the police shoot until it dies a second time.
• South Park: The episode "Hell on Earth 2006" has serial killers Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and John Wayne Gacy being resurrected from Hell to go pick up the Ferrari cake for Satan's party. Instead, they end up murdering the entire bakery staff, accidentally destroy the cake, and then mutilate each other trying to bake a new one.

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