Both an adaptation trope and a death trope, Spared by the Adaptation refers to cases where a character who died in the source material does not die in the adaptation.
The reasons behind these occurrences vary. Perhaps Media Watchdogs, Executive Meddling, and/or the creator wanted to make it Lighter and Softer than the original. Maybe the character was a fan favorite and the crew wanted to appease the fan base. Maybe the death stood out as especially pointless, and people in charge took it as a given that life is cruel and unfair so they didn't need to kill a beloved character just to make that point to the audience yet again. Maybe the events where it happens are cut for other reasons. The sky's the limit as for why this happens, which probably explains why it happens so often.
Likely to occur during a Gecko Ending where the adaptation is made before the original is even finished.
Compare with Schrödinger's Cast where a character's fate is different from the source material, but the source material is still ongoing (which may create the need for the adaptors to do a drastic rewrite if the character in question, or their averted death, becomes important later on in the source material).
Contrast with Death by Adaptation, where a character dies in the adaptation, but not in the source material.
Warning: This is a death (or lack thereof) trope and will contain unmarked spoilers. Read the examples at your own risk.
In the noveltization of L Change The World, it is vaguely suggested that Mello might exist in the movie continuity. If he does, then he falls under the trope too.
L subverts this in the live action movies. He avoids being killed by Rem, but only because he wrote his own name and time of death in the death note. He outlives Light, but dies 20 days later (23 days from when he wrote his name in).
Though neither avoids death per se, Light and Sayu have their fates softened and avoided, respectively- Sayu isn't kidnapped, and thus doesn't go temporarily insane, and Light dies in Soichiro's arms rather than alone, though he's still batshit insane to the end, much to Soichiro's dismay.
Oh, and just to rub salt in the wound, Light dies begging Soichiro to believe that he acted as Kira to put justice, which Soichiro had taught him about since childhood, into effect.
Soichiro is also not shown to die in the second rewrite special...leading to plotholes regarding his absence as well as how Light was able to acquire Mello's true name.
Duclis, a tiger-like creature from Slayers has two completely different backstories and fates in the novel and anime; in the anime, he's the friend and assistant to the prince Pokota who goes on a massive Roaring Rampage of Revenge in the name of their kingdom with the help of Zanaffar, a great beast. Despite all the chaos that occurs, he manages to survive, and flees. In the Light Novel series, he's a member of a cult that worships the world's almighty Big Bad, Shabranigdo, and he, along with almost all of the other members of the cult, winds up getting killed by Lina and her party.
And in a twisted meta-version of this trope, the eigth novel has Fibrizo the demonic lord only imprison Lina's companions and threaten their lives, which triggers Lina's second use of the Giga Slave. This is a far cry from the anime season it was based on, in which Fibrizo crushes the physical embodiments of the life forces of Lina's party members before imprisoning them.
Maximillion Pegasus in the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime. After his defeat, Evil Bakura plucks out hisMillennium Eye. In the anime, this merely knocks him out and he is almost immediately Put on a Bus as his henchmen get him to a hospital to recover. Not only does he survive in time for the filler arcs and movies, but he is also a major character in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX.
Bandit Keith is another example. In the manga, he threatens Pegasus with a knife demanding the prize money. Pegasus uses his Millenium Eye to create a Penalty Game by turning Keith's hand into a gun and "killing" himself with it. In the anime, Keith's uses a gun instead for the same reason only to fall into the trapdoor and into the ocean. He returns later under the control of Marik.
Although in Yu-Gi-Oh R, Keith is also revived by Tenma.
Subverted with Heihachi. Surprising fans of the original movie, he was spared from being the first samurai to die, but he finally meets his end in episode 25.
Scheris and Kimishima in the S-CRY-ed manga adaptation.
Alcyone in Magic Knight Rayearth, who dies due to wounds inflicted by Umi in the manga but vanishes in the anime. But then came MKR 2... where she is Brainwashed and Crazy thanks to Debonair. She dies in the last episode, though.
Emmeraude dies in the original saga, but lives in Rayearth OVA.
There are a few subversions, such as Basque Grand's death being given a passing mention in the manga, but in the 2003 anime, he gets some characterization and dies onscreen. Then in Brotherhood, he doesn't get the same characterization, but dies onscreen and goes down fighting.
Inverted in Yoki's case. He's killed in the 2003 anime by Lust to spark a riot, but manages survive to the end in the manga and Brotherhood.
Chun-Li's father is still alive (albeit hospitalized and in a coma) the last time we see him in Street Fighter II V.
There is quite a lot of Wild Mass Guessing as to why this is the case—one persistent rumour is that the manga was deliberately set up for either a video-game or manga sequel to Breath of Fire IV (especially considering that Capcom is talking of reviving the franchise and directed the Comic Book Adaptation in the first place). This would fit with the other, rather extensive changes made to the manga's end—which, up till that point, largely followed the plot of the game save for some All There in the Manual stuff from the artbook that was included in the manga.
Professor Tomoe in Sailor Moon was killed in the manga, but saved in the anime (where he's just possessed). Since the next storyline required having Sailors Uranus and Neptune raising his daughter, he was quickly Put on a Bus at the start of the next season.
This also happens to the Ayakashi Sisters, the Amazon Trio (sort of...they become souls/dreams/some sort of spiritual light and go to Elysian rather than die outright), Queen Nehelenia and Sailor Galaxia. All of them are either purified or brought to Heel Face Turns by Sailor Moon.
Prince Diamond dies in the manga and the anime, but lives in the Musicals.
In the Bokurano manga, Kana Ushiro dies alongside all of the kids. In the anime, however, Youko takes her place as a pilot and thus Kana survives the game.
Also Captain Seki, whose Heroic Sacrifice doesn't happen in the anime.
Les Misérables: Shoujo Cosette, the otherwise good, detailed anime adaptation just lets two important characters live. Gavroche would be quite ok, but with Javert it's unforgivable, especially the way the do it. He's about to jump when the sun suddenly rises, and he... decides not to. Even worse than it sounds.
Even more egregious, they actually lampshade it in the next episode preview, saying one should not commit suicide over being depressed like that. They just wanted to soften it for kids, obviously.
The second Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann movie doesn't kill off the Mauve Shirt members of the Gurren gang (specifically, Jorgun, Balinbow, Kidd, Iraak, Zorthy, and Makken), re-drawing them into the scenes that occur afterwards.
Everyone who died in the show survives in the High School AU manga, and yes, that includes Kamina. His interaction with Nia has to be seen to be believed.
Genkai in YuYu Hakusho passes away in the last chapter of the manga, but lives until the end of the series in the anime (ignoring her death and resurrection in the Dark Tournament saga).
Joe Buttataki in the Soul Eater anime lives up the the end, even though in the original manga he is killed by Justin.
Mifune also survives the events of the anime, unlike in the manga where he is killed by Black Star.
Medusa in the anime is a possible example. While she appeared to have died near the end of the series, the end credits for the last episode show her snake form implying she survived. Long after the anime ended, it seems she'd died in the manga as well, but at this point we can't be entirely sure.
Justin himself ends up dying in the manga, whereas in the anime he survives and never even turned out to be evil. Again, he dies in the manga long after the anime ended.
In the end of the anime, Giriko pulls a Villain Exit Stage Left once Arachne dies and isn't seen again. In the manga, he kept fighting the DWMA, which eventually (after the anime already ended) lead to his death.
The Ikkitousen manga heads towards Knight of Cerebus territory later on with several characters in the series killed off, but the anime held dear to the cast, keeping them all alive.
Bit of an ongoing theme due to his popularity. Even the movie version spared him.
The second Rei Ayanami still pulls a Heroic Sacrifice in Rebuild of Evangelion and ends up being swallowed alive by the Eldritch Abomination she was fighting - This time, however, her love interest and half-brother... sorta Shinji rips her directly out of the bastard and saves her life. Unfortunately, she's not fully saved just yet, as the Angel who swallowed her wasn't the Angel who got her killed in the anime, so all bets are on when that one eventually shows up....
Word Of God claims that for pacing reasons, Armisael (the angel who killed Rei in the anime) and Zeruel (the Angel who absorbed her in the movie series) were folded into one character.
While the character didn't die in the original anime Touji Suzuhara is saved from piloting Unit-03/Bardiel.
In the manga Asuka seems to be this as of the most recent chapter. "Seems to" because Shinji managed to prevent her death and the hands of the Eva Series, but considering that Third Impact started in said chapter, it's yet to be seen whether this trope will be played straight or not.
The Alternate Universe series Campus Apocalypse has a far more optimistic ending. Gendo and Yui are the only real casualties among the human characters, and the ending sees Shinji, Rei and Asuka happily returning to a normal life.
Makoto and Cecilia, the two halves of the Angel Israfel, also survive and are implied to also be living out a peaceful existence in Italy.
There is at least one EvangelionLicensed Game where you can save Kaworu Nagisa. He pilots Unit-04, which arguably also falls under this trope.
In the original Cutey Honey manga, Panther Claw's attack on Honey's school was a bloodbath, killing everyone except Honey (including Alphonne and Miharu, whose deaths were Played for Laughs). In the anime version, the only casualty was Natsuko.
In most versions of the series, the plot is kicked off by the murder of Dr. Kisaragi, and Honey fights Panther Claw to avenge him. In Cutey Honey Flash, the Shoujo version, the plot is kicked off by the kidnapping of Dr. Kisaragi, and Honey fights Panther Claw to rescue him.
In the Grenadier manga, Koto (a secondary character) is killed by the Big Bad (and fuels Rushuna's revenge against him). She survives in the anime.
Bardock is a very odd subversion in the 3-chapter Dragon Ball spin-off manga, History of Bardock. He survives Frieza's attack, but winds up going back in time. The manga gives no indication that he ever returns to his own time, meaning that he'll die long-before any of the events in the official series.
Tales Of Symphonia: The Animation is extremelycompressed due to having to fit forty hours of gameplay into ten episodes' worth of anime screentime, leading them to combine the Dragons' Nest and Rodyle's Human Ranch into the same encounter. Since it takes place in the Dragons' Nest and not underwater, this has the effect of nullifying any need for Botta to make a Heroic Sacrifice.
The Bleach anime was cancelled before it reaches the final manga arc, (mercifully) sparing Chojiro Sasakibe and Shigekuni Yamamoto.
In the Trigun Maximum manga, the character Descartes (a boomerang-wielding thug who originally appeared in the anime) winds up being impaled on his own weapon by Grey the Nine-Lives. As he never appears in the anime again after his debut, it can assumed that in that version he survived.
In the original Arashi No Yoru Ni books Gabu dies of starvation and Mei dies of exhaustion. In the movie based off said novels both survive.
A minor case, but in Dragon Ball Z during the epilogue to the Cell Saga that showcases Future Trunks finally saving his time, there's a moment where Androids 17 and 18 are shot at by a vengeful old man whose family was previously killed by the duo and is currently trapped under some debris. 17 decides to kill him, but Trunks then arrives and manages to destroy him and his sister in a Curb-Stomp Battle and is then shown helping the man out. In the original manga, 17 kills the man moments before Trunks arrives on the scene.
One Piece also has a minor case early on during Buggy's introduction. When one of Buggy mistakenly believes that one of his crew is insulting his nose, he snaps and proceeds to blow the guy to smithereens with a cannonball. In the anime, Buggy is initially going to do the same thing, but manages to be persuaded in letting him live.
Same thing with Nariya and Eriya, who are demoted to extras in the movie.
Thanks to the film only loosely adapting roughly the first quarter of the then unfinished manga, both Yupa and Teto are still alive at the end of the anime of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.
An odd variant is done in the anime adaptation of Detective Conan. In the manga, the criminal is shot and killed and later turns out to be the sister of a character who joins the cast. In the anime she survives when Conan steps in, however she's just a random criminal. The sister is still mentioned as being deceased, but she's someone else entirely.
Many Historical Domain Characters were spared in Oda Nobuna No Yabou, including Imagawa Yoshimoto (died 1560) and Saitou Dousan (died 1556), which are still there in the 1570s. Subverted by several Composite Characters; their namesakes may have died for a long time, but other characters that the characters were based on were still alive; such as Saitou Yoshitatsu—he died in 1561, but he's a composite together with his son Tatsuoki, which was still alive at the time.
In the manga adaptation of Eternal Sonata, Waltz and his agents all survive. Claves doesn't even appear.
In the manga adaption of Another, Akazawa Izumi does not die, despite dying in the original novel version and the anime adaption.
Ultimately subverted in Romeo X Juliet. The series toys with the idea of the two defying the show's Foregone Conclusion, but in the end kills them off anyway.
Comic Books
IDW's New-Trek-Movie-verse version of the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Operation: Annihilate!" spares Captain Kirk's brother George and George's wife Aurelan from being killed by the neural parasites. In the original, George Kirk was dead before the Enterprise ever arrived, and Aurelan didn't last much longer.
Dr Elizabeth Dehner also survives the IDW version of "Where No Man Has Gone Before", simply by not being there. (She gets namechecked as having turned down the Enterprise posting because of a past relationship with Dr McCoy - who, of course, wasn't yet the CMO in the original timeline.)
All the redshirts in IDW's take on "The Apple", titled "The Redshirt's Tale". The original bumped off four of them; the comic is a Lower Deck Episode from the perspective of Hendorff (the first one killed in the original, who in IDW continuity is also the security officer who fights Kirk in the movie). At the end, the four are toasting their survival and speculating that in another universe, they might not have made it.
In Perry, after the death of Thora, Perry Rhodan entered a permanent relationship with Auris of La-Thor, which lasted until the end of the original comicbook series and beyond. In the originel pulps, her model Auris of Las-Toór and Perry Rhodan felt attracted to each other, but she was killed (in the fifth issue in which she appeared) before they could get anywhere romantically.
The '"Director's Cut" miniseries of "The Clone Saga" sees both Ben Reilly and Baby May survive the events of the story. Despite the former being Retconned as being replaced and never actually having died and the latter resurrected, Aunt May and Doctor Octopus could count, too, since they also died during the Clone Saga.
The Captain Marvel of Ultimate Marvel Mahr Vehl is still alive, compared to the Captain Marvel of the 616 universe who stays dead.
In The Official Comics Adaption of Return of the Jedi Yoda still says he's dying, but Luke merely leaves him to rest according to the narration. There is still the ghost scene at the end, except that it is just one of several bonus pictures following the narrative, so readers might not actually realize that Yoda has also become a ghost.
Fan Works
Deconstructed in For Want of a Nail fic Better Angels when Shane Walsh outlives Rick Grimes following the Walker Invasion at Hershel's farm. Shane kills Rick and the only people alive suspicious of him are Glenn, Daryl, and Lori. Accusations against him combined with grief over murdering his best friend put Shane at odds with Daryl and Lori, but he is still forced to take over Rick's role as leader when the group begins a journey into Season 3's setting, the prison. Rick's death prevents the group from learning the truth about reanimation and Shane's ruthlessness inevitably puts the group on a darker path than when Rick was alive and Shane wasn't.
Many Bleach works invert this, mostly due to the seeming immortality of the main characters. Downfall and Hammered Down are interesting examples because the former has a large percentage of the backstory characters alive and well, others die, though - Hammered down starts plays this somewhat straighter.
And According to Word Of God, Pip Perrup and Chef wind up getting this Trope, and also his universe Kills off Scott Tenorman though human transmutation, ya little crybabies.
Particularly popular in NarutoFan Fics is Haku, though Zabuza isn't used nearly as often.
Haku and the Third Hokage (at least so far) in Team 8. However, in the latter case, he lost an arm and was forced to step down as Hokage.
Haku and Zabuza both survive in [1]. So far, the story seems fairly lighthearted, though the advent of the Chunin Exams arc seems like it may change that.
Nihlus in Renegade. Since the MacGuffin on Eden Prime is a Tacitus, rather than a Prothean beacon, Saren is carrying it around with him; Nihlus notices and is about to turn and ask Saren about it when the latter tries to shoot him in the head. Thanks to the movement, though, it's not as deadly as it "should" have been.
Dragon Ball Abridged reveals that the Kanassans, a psychic race that were killed off in the original show (and the main reason Bardock could see the future), managed to miraculously repopulate.
Captain Hook from Peter Pan. In the book, he is simply swallowed up by the crocodile, but in the movie, he immediately jumps out of the crocodile's mouth unharmed shortly after being swallowed up and later swimming away screaming for Smee with the crocodile still behind him.
There's an interesting story behind this. Originally, Disney was going to make Hook an evil, intimidating character who would die like his literary counterpart. However, they discovered that the slapstick scenes with the crocodile effectively ruined any sense that he was a serious threat. Therefore, they went all out and played him as an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain. They kept him alive because they figured the audience wouldn't want to see such a humorous, non-threatening villain die.
Shere Khan from The Jungle Book. He retreats with a burning branch tied to his tail. Seconds after he's out of sight, it rains. In fact, he's still alive by the end of the sequel! Also the monkeys, who were eaten by Kaa originally.
Mad Madam Mim from The Sword in the Stone. In the book, she was killed after Merlin became an infectuous disease, but in the movie, she is merely bedridden, and that Merlin actually had to use sunlight in order to cure her.
Both The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Ballerina from Fantasia 2000. The main reason why they both lived in the Disney adaptation is because the writers of the film actually did not want to cause any Soundtrack Dissonance considering the fact that the musical piece accompanying this scene is an optimistic-sounding one.
John Luther "Casey" Jones from The Brave Engineer. In real life, he actually died in the train crash.
Pocahontas in Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World. In real life, she died during her stay in England.
Maleficent in the Disney Theme Parks version of Sleeping Beauty, whose cackling can be heard at the very last part of the ride, implying that she had survived being stabbed by the Sword of Truth and falling off a cliff. However, this was eventually removed and replaced with a scene where the fairies are still bickering over what color Aurora's dress should be. There was also a sequel storybook which also had Maleficent survive the above and still cause trouble.
Anastasia in Anastasia (if you consider reality to be the source material, since it's so historically inaccurate it may as well be an Alternate Universe).
Ostap Bender from Mel Brooks adaptation of The Twelve Chairs survives the book instead of having his throat cut for all his trouble. An interesting case, as while the book itself explicitly stated him as dead, the character was later brought back for a sequel.
Lampshaded during Gnomeo's conversation with a Shakespeare statue, where he calls the original a "horrible ending."
Schlocky grindhouse adaptation Tromeo And Juliet spares the two as well.
Even compared to the below mentioned live-action version, Professor Bruttenholm gets this is the second Hellboy Animated movie, Blood and Iron, surviving the events of the movie.
John Hammond in Jurassic Park. Ian Malcolm as well, which may have led Michael Crichton to make him Not Quite Dead in the sequel, though it's clearly implied that he dies in the first book.
It's actually an inversion (not counting the Malcom issue): In the book, Gennaro and Muldoon survive with Grant, Sattler, and the kids while Hammond and Malcolm are killed; in the film, Muldoon and Gennaro are eaten by rampaging dinosaurs and the survivors are Hammond and Malcolm.
Dodgson is eaten in the second book, but in the second movie, a different character plays his role (although it could be argued that after Nedry doesn't return, Dodgson tries to get the embryos himself...)
In the musical film version of Little Shop Of Horrors, Seymour and Audrey both escape their fate of being eaten by the plant, which is killed. Partly subverted in that, in the stage musical, Audrey was a victim of Death by Adaptation, having survived in the original film, while the plant, who died in the original film, ends up surviving.
From The Shining, the Overlook Hotel itself is left intact, as opposed to the book which had it being blown off. Kubrick allegedly felt the destruction of the hotel brought too much of a happy ending to the story, so it became one of the many things he left out of his adaptation. This may also be due to Kubrick turning what originally was a story about ghosts into a film about madness, meaning that the hotel itself became less of an enemy to be eliminated, most of the horror now coming from the characters themselves and what they experience.
Saruman and Wormtongue in the theatrical versions of The Lord of the Rings movies. Not so much in the Extended Editions. (Which explains why the palantir is in the water when Pippin picks it up)
Additionally, in the books the Isengarders set one of the Ents ablaze and it's implied he burned to death. In the film, the Ent survives long enough to douse himself in the monstrous flood, turning an off-screen moment of villainy into a Funny Background Event.
The Amazing Spiderman applies this trope to Gwen as well though not so much to her father. Though given the implication at the end that her involvement with Peter is putting her in danger, and the fact that both Norman Osborn and Mary Jane have been cast, they're probably saving that for a sequel.
The title character in the 2003 version of Willard.
The title character dies in the 1971 version and is heavily implied to have died in the original novel.
Roger in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?; whereas in the source material he was the murder victim (specifically, his cause of death was censorship), here he's the murder suspect (the murder victim being Marvin Acme).
The Village Elder in The Magnificent Seven. Chico is a partial example, as he's a composite of two of the main characters of Seven Samurai: Kikuchiyo, who dies, and Katsushiro, who does not.
The Renfield-type character in Nosferatu, both the original and in Werner Herzog's remake.
Nobody ever has the heart to kill off Fagin in Oliver Twist remakes anymore.
Or sentence the Artful Dodger to transportation to Australia.
Mister Arrow in Muppet Treasure Island, which actually becomes an important plot point later on.
This was averted with Billy Bones. Which is significant because he was the only character ever to die in a Muppet movie. Billy Connolly (who portrayed Bones) is quite proud of that fact.
Matt Hooper from Jaws; granted in the film he is a much more likeable character.
Two characters in The Golden Compass movie: Tony Makarios, whose daemon is severed from him, and Roger. In the book, both are killed. There may have been plans for Roger to die in the following movie (though his death was in the end of the first volume of the book series, not the second,) but since that movie will apparently not be made, as it actually stands Roger survived in the film.
The script did, in fact, include Roger's death and that scene was filmed before being removed.
Subverted with Hedwig. In the book, Harry takes her with him when he leaves the Dursleys and she's killed in the following chase scene. In the film, he lets her go before the chase scene, only for her to return and die taking a spell for him.
The originally filmed ending to First Blood was much closer to the novel by David Morrell, which had John Rambo forcing Trautman to kill him. However, due to Rambo's more sympathetic portrayal in the film, a new ending was filmed which had Rambo being arrested instead, making the sequels possible. Due to the relative obscurity of the novel, not many are aware that Rambo was supposed to die in the first film. Ironically, Morrell adapted the film's sequels into novels; as such, he took note of the Canon Discontinuity in the first sequel, throwing said discontinuity out the window just as quickly.
Higgins in Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, since the subplot that killed him didn't make the movie, though early versions of the screenplay killed him in the final battle.
At the time the first Superman film was made, both Ma and Pa Kent were dead in the comics by the time Clark becomes Superman. In the film, however, only Pa Kent dies. In the Post-Crisis comics both Kents are still alive making Jonathan Kent dying on SmallvilleDeath by Adaptation.
Ditto the sadistic Nazi officer Skoda. He's shot in the book for torturing Stevens. In the movie, he's renamed Sessler and is simply tied up. In the film, Sessler is not a sadistic Nazi but a professional Wermacht officer. He assures Mallory that Franklin will receive proper medical care. At the end, Franklin is seen in a hospital bed and smiles as he hears the explosion marking the mission's success. His fate isn't stated, but would likely be held as POW for the rest of the war.
Most movie adaptations of Romeo and Juliet leave out the deaths of Paris and Lady Montague, probably because both contribute little to the story and slow down the ending.
Though this very often creates a plot hole when the prince says that he has lost "a brace of kinsmen" at the end. The movie makers obviously don't realize what "a brace" means; it means two: two kinsmen, namely Mercutio and Paris. Without Paris' death, the prince has only lost one kinsman!
The Prince's comment is made even more confusing in the Leonardo DiCaprio version where Captain Prince and Mercutio are black and Paris is white. And there is no evidence of any of them being of mixed race.
In the remake of Carrie, the title character survives and goes into hiding in Florida.
This, incidentally, was because they were planning on doing a TV series about Carrie going on the run and helping other troubled teens with powers like hers. It never happened.
Atreyu's horse, Artax, in the movie adaption of The Neverending Story. To be precise, it does die by sinking in a swamp through despair just like in the book, but it somehow comes back to life at the end of the movie. And it appears in the second movie, still alive.
Well, one can conclude quite easily that, due to Bastian getting as many wishes as he wanted, he specifically wished Artax back to life.
The Godfather. Calo, Michael's bodyguard while hiding in Sicily, is killed by the same explosion that killed Apollonia in the novel. He survives the movie adaptation, but is later killed in Part III of the film series.
Charlie's brother in Lemonade Mouth. In the movie he's older, away at college until he returns near the climax. In the book, he's Charlie's twin and was stillborn.
Both film versions of " A Little Princess" have Sara's father survive.
The 2011 film version of The Three Musketeers spares Milady de Winter, the Duke of Buckingham, and Constance Bonacieux. Cardinal Richelieu's survival is not an example; his deaths in previous adaptations are actually examples of Death by Adaptation (he survives the original book).
Cantor Rabinowitz in The Jazz Singer. In the 1927 original he passed away at his deathbed after listening to his son Jack sing the Kol Nidre so beautifully and telling his wife Sara, "we have our son again" (his ghost is then shown at Jack's side in the synagogue). In the 1980 Neil Diamond remake, however, when Cantor Rabinowitz sees his son Jess sing the Kol Nidre in his father's place (since said father can't sing due to high blood pressure), he becomes surprised, and after some conversation, the father forgives his son and gives a heartwarming embrace. He even hears the performance of Diamond's "America" at the end.
Played straight with lover Frank at first in the 1975 film adaptation of The Who's Tommy, but then subverted at the end of the film when the angry mob kills him and Nora Walker.
Blick in the 1948 film adaptation of The Time of Your Life.
In the film version of My Sister's Keeper, Kate dies and Anna lives. In the book, Anna sues her parents for medical emancipation so she won't have to give her kidney to Kate, who has leukemia. Then, she is hit by a car and her kidney is given anyway. In the movie, Kate agrees with the lawsuit, knowing that she will die.
Thufir Hawat is shown in the crowd watching Paul's duel with Feyd-Rautha at the end of Dune. His death scene just before that duel was filmed, but was cut.
The Hellboy comic book kicks off with the death of Professor Bruttenholm, Hellboy's "father". In the film adaptation, he survives half the movie.
Echo the Ventriloquist drowns in The Unholy Three, but survives in both movie adaptations; rather ironic given that this was Lon Chaney's final role before his untimely death.
In Stand by Me, the narrator reveals at the end that Chris was killed in a knife fight as an adult. As shocking as this was, it beat the original story by Stephen King, where three out of the four kids (excepting Gordie) met early ends in the epilogue.
As pointed out in this article, even Gordie may not be lasting much longer in the original story...
The film adaptation of Our Town has the female protagonist surviving. The third act of the play has her dying while giving birth to her child and takes place in the afterlife; in the film the afterlife portion is a dream she has.
An odd case is used for the Die Hard films, which were initially based off a novel entitled Nothing Lasts Forever. In it, the character Joseph Leland, whom John McClane was based on, has to save his daughter on Christmas Eve... and ultimately he fails, as after sending on the antagonist out a window he manages to grab his daughter and take her with him. In the films, McClane's character was made younger and the hostage was changed to his wife instead of his daughter. Antagonist Hans Gruber attempts to do the same thing, but this time John successfully saves her. In the fourth film in the series, McClane's now grown-up daughter actually does get taken hostage by the film's Big Bad, but she is also saved by the end of the film.
Police Chief Dwayne T. Robinson is a much more standard use of the trope. In the novel, when Karl returns at the very end he manages to shoot and kill Robinson before he is gunned down by Sgt. Powell. In the film, Powell is able to kill Karl before he harms anyone.
In the original Night of the Living Dead Barbra is dragged off and implied to be devoured by a horde of zombies (among which, her brother is included) during the film's final siege. In the 1990 remake, she becomes an Action Survivor.
In Silent Hill 3 Harry's death is the sole reason Heather travels to Silent Hill to seek out revenge. In the film Silent Hill Revelation 3 D he survives; the one film Sean Bean is supposed to die in and he lives. Vincent also survives, but his character has also change completely.
A Little Princess has had two movie adaptations, one in 1939 with Shirley Temple, and one in 1995. In both of these, Sara's father does not die as he does in the novel of Brain Fever, he is merely injured in war and either too traumatized (1939) or anmesiac (1995).
Possibly the case with Weena in the 1960 version of The Time Machine. In the original novel she is seperated from the protagonist in the midst of a forest fire and he it unable to find her. Ultimately her fate is left ambiguous, but the protagonist (who narrates the story) isn't optimistic about her odds of survival. In the movie she very clearly survives and almost joins the protagonist in his own time (which is only prevented when the Morlocks trap him in the statue and he is forced to use time travel to escape, as in the book).
Cee Cee Bloom's mother survives much longer in the film adaptation of Beaches. In the original novel, Leona dies of a heart attack while her daughter is in her late teens. The film changes this to Leona moving away to Florida, and brings her back for a later scene where she calls her daughter out on her selfish personality.
Instead of following the ending to the novel, the English language film versions of And Then There Were None followed either the ending to Agatha Christie's theatrical adaptation (sparing Lombard and Vera), or a slightly altered version in which Lombard is really Charles Morley, the real Lombard having died already (thus sparing only Vera.)
Nicole Horne becomes a Karma Houdini in the film of MaxPayne. The stinger sequence suggests that Max doesn't intend to let them stay that way.
In the original Red Dawn 1984 out of the Wolverines only Danny and Erica survive, in the remake only Jed and Darryl are killed the rest survive.
Literature
Honor Harrington is Horatio Nelson In Space! Except Honor lives through the IN SPACE! version of Nelson's final battle, as found in At All Costs. due to some last minute changes and going Off the Rails. She was suppose to die in At All Costs until David Weber was convinced to move the next generation plot up about 20 years.
Possibly the cook in the novelization of Titan A.E.. At the very least, their death occurs off-screen.
A Bambi read-along book never mentions the death of his mother. Now, she COULD have died, but it just jumps from Winter to Spring and Bambi being grown up with no deaths. She just disappears.
Another storybook, this time based on The Princess and the Frog, actually does not mention Ray the firefly's death at all!
Some storybooks based on Cars 2 actually leave out the deaths of Rod "Torque" Redline, Leland Turbo, and Tony Trihull. Also, one LEGO playset based on that movie had Leland Turbo's cube drawn in a way so it now shows his pitiful eyes, suggesting that he is still alive even as a cube.
In fact, a lot of tie-in Disney storybooks tend to leave out the deaths of important characters, which occasionally result in Plot Holes, especially if the death is related to the plot. An inversion would be in some tie-in storybooks based on Atlantis: The Lost Empire, King Kashekhim Nedakh's death is not mentioned at all, yet we still see his daughter ____ as a Queen at the end.
Youth adaptations of 11th-century Welsh legend How Culhwch Won Olwen cut out the death of Ysbaddaden the giant, skipping straight to the wedding. This is strange because Ysbaddaden's curse - that he will die once his daughter marries - is why he sends Culhwch on the impossible Engagement Challenge to begin with.
The novelization of Transformers 3: Dark Of The Moon has Wheelie, Brains, and Megatron surviving. In the film Wheelie and Brains go down with a Decepticon ship they sabotaged, and Megatron is killed in a final confrontation with Optimus Prime.
In the MAD parody/adaptation of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Wreck of the Hesperus, both the skipper and his daughter survive the wreck, with the latter still tied to a broken-off 20-foot-tall mainmast (!) and bringing back the former from his frozen state.
The novelization of X2: X-Men United spares Jean Grey because of Fridge Logic: why did she have to leave the plane to levitate it to safety? Instead she levitates it from the inside and gets saved with everyone else.
Live Action TV
Battlestar Galactica: In the original series, Baltar is an example of this. In the film and pilot, he was executed by order of the Cylon leader. When it became a regular series, the producers allowed Baltar to live even re-editing the original pilot so that now the leader spares Baltar's life.
In the original British version of Queer As Folk, Phil goes home with a drug dealer, overdoses, and dies; in the American remake the equivalent character, Ted, has the same experience but survives.
Smallville has an in-universe example. When the "Warrior Angel" comic gets a live-action adaptation the love interest that dies in the comic gets to live. Naturally this enrages the Fan Dumb and one of the more obsessed fans tries to force the movie to follow the comic by attempting to kill the actress.
In Power Rangers Time Force, there were plans to kill off Eric like his Sentaicounterpart Naoto, but it was decided to let him live. In a similar case, while Lila's final fate is unknown, Nadira eventually redeemed herself. Gluto, meanwhile, cryo-freezes himself during the finale; his Timeranger counterpart, Don Dolnero, dies during the finale. Sadly, Frax wasn't spared like Gien was.
Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers had Tommy lose his powers (twice) instead of being killed like his Sentai counterpart Burai. Additionally, Rito Revolto's Ninja Sentai Kakuranger counterpart Gasha Dokuro did not survive the finishing move of Super Kakure Daishogun (AKA the Ninja Megafalconzord). In fact, that battle, Gasha Dokuro's last, was Rito's first!
Second actually. In his first fight, he destroyed the Thunder Megazord and Tigerzord, which used a combination of Dairanger, American, and Kakuranger footage (with Kakure Dai Shogun edited out). Three episodes later, the Kakuranger footage was reused, intact this time.
Marah also qualify as she redeemed herself while Furabijo her original counterpart was killed in Boukenger VS Super Sentai. Kapri can also be counted as Wendinu is in similar case to Lila.
We also got Matoombo who is revived after the Master was defeated while his counterpart, Titan, stayed dead.
Also, Toxica and Jindrax from Wild Force get a Redemption Equals Life ending, turning against their leaders who'd used them as pawns, and rode off into the sunset together just before the Grand Finale. Their sentai counterparts Tsuetsue and Yabaiba never reformed (though Yabaiba could have if it weren't for his growing love for Tsuetsue), and were buried in their Collapsing Lair at the end. They are revealed to have survived in the teamup with Hurricanger, at the end of which they definitely die. Though Tsuetsue is revived in Boukenger vs. Super Sentai, but is killed off again.
If you count that Tenaya is a counterpart of Kegalesia(she technically filled the latter position), then she is one as well.
Richard in the miniseries of The Pillars of the Earth, thanks to the heavy truncation of the last couple hundred pages.
Originally, Shane in The Walking Dead dies very early on. He doesn't die in the TV series until the end of the 2nd season.
Denna the Mord-Sith has a fairly important death in the Sword of Truth books (Richard turns the blade of the Sword white and kills her because he loves her.) Less so in the series adaptation Legend of the Seeker, where she survives for a time after Richard escapes.
In the first Dexter book, Maria LaGuerta is killed in a confrontation with the Ice Truck Killer. She lasted for seven seasons of the series, but has now also been killed.
Syrio Forel's death is moved offscreen and they Never Found the Body, leaving open the option to bring him back, though his death is more unambiguous in the books
Doreah, one of Dany's handmaidens, does not die in the Red Waste, and another (Irri) later dies in Quarth instead.
And then (most likely) subverted - as a result of her survival here, Doreah ends up betraying Daenerys, which in turn led to Irri's death. When dany finds out, she has Doreah (and Xaro, whom she betrayed Dany for) condemned to death by starvation in Xaro's impenetrable vault. Inverted with Xaro, who in the book never betrays her and shows up again later.
In Pretty Little Liars, Toby Cavanaugh, Jenna Cavanaugh, and Mona Vanderwaal all are still alive.
The ITV adaptation of Agatha Christie's novel Cards On The Table spared Anne Meredith and Mrs Lorrimer (who is her mother in this version), derailing and killing off Rhoda Dawes instead.
An odd example occurs with UFO, where a character is spared by dub-induced censorship. In Germany, UFO fell victim to What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids? quite badly, and was censored extensively to keep it family-friendly. The greatest change to the plot was made in "A Question of Priorities". In the episode, Straker's son Johnny is hit by a car and needs special medication to survive, which is only available in America. Straker orders a SHADO transport to get the medicine over in time, but the transport is diverted after a UFO with a possible alien defector shows up. In the original episode, John dies, and the alien defector is killed by a second UFO. In the censored German episode, Straker gets a phone call stating that John survived.
Justified is based on the Elmore Leonard books Pronto and Riding the Rap and the short story "Fire in the Hole". In the TV show Raylan's father Arlo Givens is a major antagonist but in the books he is stated to have died when Raylan was just a teenager.
"Fire in the Hole" is the basis for the pilot episode of the TV series and in the end of the short story Boyd Crowder died. He was also supposed to die in the pilot but everyone liked Walton Goggins' performance so much that the character was only seriously wounded and was later promoted to be the secondary protagonist of the series.
When Agatha Christie wrote the play adaptation of Ten Little Indians a.k.a. And Then There Were None, she changed the ending so that Vera Claythorne and Phillip Lombard both survive. It's helped by the fact that there are different versions of the poem the murderer bases the killings on, with different endings (one of which sounds much cheerier than the "hanged themself" ending actually used in the original book).
Emilia in the Verdi-Boïto opera Otello, mostly because the Compressed Adaptation of Shakespeare's text leaves no time for minor characters to have death scenes.
When composer Ambroise Thomas adapted Hamlet, he actually wanted to keep the title character alive; he was originally supposed to kill Claudius, then sing that he was still depressed, but had a kingdom to rule. It was eventually impressed on him that the audience would not be pleased by this, but he still left Polonius and Gertrude standing in the final version.
Clarisse in the adaptation of Fahrenheit 451, though her "death" in the original book was rather vague.
The stage play adaptation of His Dark Materials, Lee Scoresby is absent from the later part of the story, and as such he doesn't die, and Lyra and Will do not meet him in the world of the dead.
There's a stage version of The Hobbit in which Thorin survives the final battle.
Captain Vere in the opera version of Billy Budd. In the book he's shot in a battle, in the opera he lives to old age and the whole story is his flashback.
...although at least one production (in Hamburg) had him slitting his wrists in the Epilogue.
Some productions of Romeo and Juliet do this to Paris by cutting the scene where he gets killed.
In Thomas Lodge's novel Rosalynd, usurping Duke Torismund dies in a forest battle at the end. When William Shakespeare adapted Rosalynd into the play known as As You Like It, he spared the Duke, now named Frederick, by having him find religion and make an offscreenHeel Face Turn. This is probably because the Duke is the father of one of the heroines, who loves him very much and is deeply sad that he's so evil; killing him off would ruin the gleeful party atmosphere of the quadruple wedding at the end.
The musical Show Boat let Andy and Parthy survive into the final scenes. In Edna Ferber's novel (and the 1929 film, which mostly followed the novel) Andy is drowned in a storm and Parthy later dies during the Time Skip. Also in the novel, Ravenal is never seen again after leaving his family; he and Magnolia are ultimately reunited in all adaptations.
In Rent, Mimi survives her brush with death, unlike the Mimi of La Bohème.
Audrey II in Little Shop Of Horrors. Inverted with Mushnik, Audrey and the entire human race, who don't die in the original. (And then played straight again in the film based on the musical, where Audrey and the human race are spared.)
According to contemporary sources, Euripides had the title character and Haemon survive in his (now lost) Antigone.
West Side Story, which is based on Romeo and Juliet, spares Maria, who is its version of Juliet. (The characters who are versions of Romeo, Mercutio, and Tybalt all still die.)
Video Games
A number of Video Game Remakes and Updated Rereleases include a sidequest or 100% Completion feature that allow you to save a popular character who was Doomed by Canon in the original game (usually in cases where the death was meaningless to the plot, and sometimes they even allow you to change the plot entirely by saving the character, giving you a different endgame).
Among the characters who died in the original version of Persona 3 were Chidori and Shinjiro, both of whom developed strong fan followings. When the game was remade as Persona 3: FES, a sidequest was added to allow you to save the former, then when the game was remade again for the PSP, another sidequest was added to save the latter. The frustrating thing is that both of these are pure Guide Dang It and the latter is only possible if you chose the female main character, so it's missable from the very first choice in the game.
The latter still manages to be horribly tragic since it requires the player to romance Shinjiro. Meaning at the end of the game he survives and gets out of the hospital just in time to watch the protagonist die.
The remake of Dragon Quest IV gives you the option of redeeming and recruiting Saro, the Tragic VillainBig Bad, and joining forces to fight The Starscream who was really responsible for the whole damn mess.
The PS2 rerelease of Phantasy Star II allows you to restore Nei back to life, thereby thumbing your nose at her extremely cruel Plotline Death in the original. It involves a very convoluted and difficult process, but good Godis it ever worth it.
The Wii release of Dead Rising, Chop Till You Drop, let you save the gun shop owner Cletus, whereas in the original game you had to kill him as part of a boss battle. Likewise, Dead Rising 2: Off the Record has a divergent plot from the original Dead Rising 2, where Rebecca Chang becomes Frank's love interest and survives the game, whereas Stacey turns out to be the Big Bad and is killed in the finale.
The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth: First, Gandalf faces off the Balrog and wins, continuing down the road alongside the rest of Fellowship. Then, possibly because of that, Boromir survives the skirmish on Amon Hen and accompanies Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas throughout Rohan, Helm's Deep and eventually returns home to Minas Tirith. Then Theoden can survive the battle of Minas Tirith and will continue leading Rohan's army.
According to Word Of God when the game was in development, whether or not those two survived was meant to be up to the player's abilities. They can still die, but if you're careful they'll survive instead.
Several throughout the Star Wars video game adaptations:
Greedo and Jabba in Yoda Stories (at least in the Game Boy version).
In Star Wars: Rebel Assault, the final mission is a retelling of the Death Star battle from Episode IV. At the end of this mission, many more starfighters are seen to have survived the battle (at least eight in the game, as opposed to two X-Wings and a Y-Wing in the film).
Star Wars Episode I: Jedi Power Battles loosely tells Episode I's story as an action game, but with two notable differences. The first is Mace Windu and some other Jedi are fighting alongside Obi-Wan and Qui Gon the entire time. The second? Qui Gon lives.
Mace Windu vanishes from LEGO Star Wars after Grievous' flagship crashlands on Coruscant.
The NES Rambo game based on First Blood Part II allows the player to save Rambo's Vietnamese love interest Co from the grasp of death by ignoring her completely after Rambo escapes from the Vietnamese prison camp. Since talking to NPCs serve as save points, it makes sense from a playing standpoint.
The fate of Randam Hajile is left ambiguous in the original floppy disk versions of Snatcher. The later CD-ROM versions of the game killed him off for good, but SD Snatcher actually kept him alive until the very end.
The first Reinforce is alive and a playable character in the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha As Portable games. However, Hayate's ending in the first game suggests that she will fade from existence in the near future.
Several of the video game adaptations of Alien 3 allow Ellen Ripley (the main heroine of the series) to remain alive at the end of the game, and disregard the plotline about being infected by a facehugger. The NES adaptation ends with her simply leaving the facility after she completes the final mission (and presumably escaping via unknown means), while the Game Boy adaptation ends with her using Bishop's body to fix the controls of the EEV and travel back to Gateway Station.
While it's not a straight-up adaptation, all of Grimmjow's Fraccion in Bleach: The 3rd Phantom survive the raid on Karakura town. Subverted in that they do die later on (D-Roy and Nakeem in a raid on Soul Society, and the rest protecting Las Noches).
The good ending for the video game adaptation of Harlan Ellison's I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream allows the player to completely avert the grisly fate that befalls the cast in the original story. The ending sees AM truly destroyed by the protagonists, with humanity seemingly restored thanks to a conveniently-revealed cryogenics facility filled with humans who could potentially repopulate the devastated Earth.
The Game Boy game Gremlins Unleashed plays around oddly with the trope. In the final boss against Spike in Gizmo's story, his defeat leads to his usual death animation. The ending cutscene after however shows him alive, humiliatingly captured by Gizmo. Similarly Spike kills Gizmo in his final boss battle, but the ending cutscene instead has him stuffing the still alive Gizmo's face with food as a nearby clock counts to midnight, implying an ill fate for the mogwi.
There is one guy who just can't make up his mind on if he wants to live or die in these games: Gai Daigouji, who, in six games the Nadesico series's shown up in (Advance, Reverse, Judgement, Impact, MX and W), two he lives all the way through, three he's an optional character and one he STAYS dead!
The Evangelion cast has a much much happier and better existance in SRW, and most of the symapthetic characters live. Ritsuko always dies in any game that finishes the End of Evangelion plot. Only in L was she spared because nobody died in L on account of the Eva plot ending shortly after Asuka showed up. Kaji also usually doesn't make it, although he also survived L for the same reason, and unlike Ritsuko he made it through MX. Gendo always dies, but he arguably deserves it. Mitsato, and at least one of the Rei's always make it, and the Bridge Bunnies always survive although they're never seen again after getting Tanged in Alpha 3. 3rd Impact is always averted, and in a way that doesn't end with Shinji and Asuka alone in a world of Tang.
In Super Robot Wars Original Generation 2, Lee Linjun dies aboard his ship when he stupidly tries to use it to take down the Kurogane. In the Enhanced Remake, Super Robot Wars Original Generations, his ship is merely crippled in the same scene, not destroyed, which allows him to escape. The Anime of the Game, Super Robot Wars Original Generation: The Inspector, also spares him by keeping him from having his Face Heel Turn.
Super Robot Wars Original Generation Gaiden features a lot of these and an eventually subverted inversion. When they chose to adapt the OVA into game form in the bonus section of Original Generations, the segment ended in Lamia, who survived the OVA, getting shot down dead by Wilhelm von Juergen and thrown off to space, left for the dead, making her seemingly an inversion of the trope. The actual game later revealed that she actually survived, picked up by Duminuss then Brainwashed and Crazy to play the Master Asia part of Reversal. She gets better... and later on, the game pulls a massive straight playing on some of Compact 3 cast, including Fernando Albark, Alion Lucada and Maysis Mark, when you compare to the original where every originals except Folka died. And the game also pulls a surprise one in form of Reversal's Despinis, one of the Quirky Miniboss Squad that you fight in Reversal, resulting her pulling a Heel Face Turn for good.
And then 2nd Original Generations inverts this: In Super Robot Wars Destiny, Perfectio is impossible to kill and only defeated when Treize Khushrenada pulled a Heroic Sacrifice to seal him off forever. They went along with this plot point, and picked Ventus, who was promoted from Secret Character into an automatic-join (and no longer exclusive with fellow secret character Glacies), to take Treize's place in the Heroic Sacrifice of sealing and defeating Perfectio.Also previously in Destiny, Rim gets to keep her two personalities throughout the game. In OG, one of them, the Nice Girl one, Chris... VANISHED, lost forever, and leaving Rim with just one personality, and she is not happy about it.
The Matrix: Path of Neo video game, which followed the plot of the movie trilogy, did this with the ending, where instead of Neo sacrificing himself to stop Smith, Smith merges all his pieces into a 500-foot-tall Mega-Smith, which Neo fights as the final boss. This was lampshaded with a tongue-in-cheek cameo by the Wachowski Brothers explaining that artsy everybody dies plots are fine for films, but video games are about punching out Galactus using the Hulk.
In Peter Jacksons King Kong: The Game of the Movie, Hayes has a much larger role as The Lancer and survives the events of the game. In contrast, Preston has no significant role in the game other than being eaten by the first V-Rex fairly early on. There's also the unlockable bonus ending in which you can actually save King Kong from his fate atop the Empire State building.
The Hook point-and-click adventure game leaves out Rufio's death and you can see him alive and well on the ending screen. Surprisingly, the NES game averts this.
The Sega CD adaptation of the first film has Reese killing the Terminator and surviving.
LJN's release of Terminator 2 completely changes up the ending that both subverts this trope and plays it straight: after the T-800 knocks the T-1000 into the molten steel, but rather than dying the T-1000 actually merges with it and is fought as a final boss. The T-800 then truly kills it, and then with its mission of saving John Conner complete proceeds to teleport back to the future.
In the adventure game Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade if you're very quick with your Pixel Hunting, it's possible to pick up the Holy Grail before Elsa Schneider can grab it and then return it to the immortal knight, allowing Elsa to live.
According to the Arkham City Stories in Batman Arkham City, Carmine "The Roman" Falcone is alive and well in the Arkhamverse. Granted, according to the Arkham City Stories, Hugo Strange and Quincy Sharp drove him and his family out of Gotham and into hiding in Bludhaven prior to Arkham City, but considering Two-Face killed his comics counterpart at the end of The Long Halloween and his The Dark Knight Saga counterpart was driven insane by the Scarecrow's fear toxin in Batman Begins, Falcone in the Arkhamverse is doing quite well by comparsion.
A strategy game based on The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Chaos Island, allows Eddie to be used throughout the entire campaign. Occasionally, clicking on him will cause him to lampshade the circumstances: "Didn't I die? In the movie, I died."
This isn't so much an adaptation as a localization, but Mother 1's English translation and its re-release in Mother 1+2 contained a scene in the credits showing Teddy making a full recovery, while in the original, he was implied to have died.
In the video game adaptation of Tomorrow Never Dies for the Playstation, James Bond is successfully able to save Paris Carver, who died in the original film.
Though he still ultimately dies, in video game of From Russia With Love Red Grant lasts a bit longer than his film or novel counterpart. He secretly survives his fight with Bond on the train and shows up at the very end for one final showdown before being put down for good.
A roundabout example occurs in Dragon Ball Abridged. Yes, Nappa dies like he did in the original series, but unlike the source material, he comes back to life. When they wished all the people Freeza and his men killed back to life, that technically included Nappa since Vegeta was still working for him at the time.
Shredder in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic was killed right in the first issue, resurrected once, then killed again. All animated adaptations gave him Joker Immunity.
In the comics, Triceraton Leader Zanramon was (apparently) accidentally killed by his own men as they tried to rescue him from the turtles, who were holding Zanramon hostage. When the second cartoon adapted this story, however, they manage to recover him alive, and Zanramon was left free to plague the turtles a second time. Curiously, however, after the cartoon aired its adaptation, the still-ongoing comic retconned Zanramon's death again, revealing that he had apparently not died at all!
In the original comics, Splinter was the pet rat of dead ninja master Hamato Yoshi; in the first and third cartoons, Splinter is Hamato Yoshi. (The IDW comics came up with a creative way to split the difference: Hamato Yoshi died and was reincarnated as Splinter.)
The Rat King died after his first fight with the Turtles, and Splinter comes across his dead body in the comic books. Most adaptations prefer to keep the character around alive and well.
W.I.T.C.H. has Yan Lin, Will's dormouse, Halinor, Cassidy and Nerissa either still alive or (in Cassidy's case) resurrected by the end of the series.
In the Sonic Sat AM episode "Game Guys", Ari gets sucked into The Void. In Sonic: Friend or Foe?, a book based on that episode, he escapes with Sonic.
Ultimately subverted when Ari escapes from The Void in a later episode.
On Teen Titans Terra was turned to stone, not crushed to death as in the "Judas Contract" comic story. Cyborg mentions that it may even be possible to reverse her condition. The last episode implies this may have happened through unknown means.
Beast Boy originally joined the Titans after his original team, the Doom Patrol, died fighting the Brotherhood of Evil. In the cartoon, the Doom Patrol is alive and well.
Tigra and Wildebeest are killed on their first introduction in the comics, they both survive through the final battle against the Brotherhood.
Also, Martian Manhunter' family and the entire population of Mars. (This is actually how it was in the Silver Age; Greg Weisman says that he never saw a reason to make J'onn the Last of His Kind, since that is just copying Superman's shtick).
Zatara...technically. He is now Dr. Fate's host.
In Brightest Day, it is shown that Aqualad's birth mother died after being experimented upon by rogue Atlanteans. The show's tie-in comic reveals that his mother is still alive in this continuity.
Harm as well. He was shot dead by his own father in his debut story, but was simply captured by Zatanna and Artemis in the show.
The 1990s animated X-Men series did an adaptation of the Dark Phoenix saga. One of the most enduring, powerful moments in the original comic-book Dark Phoenix saga was when the Phoenix has a Heroic Sacrifice. In the animated adaptation, she died, but the rest of the X-Men were allowed to bring her back to life by each sacrificing a small part of their life force. It was like instead of Jean dying, everybody else had a head cold for a week or two.
Proteus was killed by Colossus in the original comics, but in the show, he gets a happy ending where he returns to his human form and reconciles with his parents.
Jubilee's parents also survived. In the comics, she's an orphan.
Professor Erskine was presumably not assassinated in X-Men Evolution, since Wolverine explains that the Super-Soldier Serum was scrapped due to being fatal to non-mutants, rather than its creator being killed.
Queen Iolande's brother Ragnar was a minor villain in the Green Lantern comics, and was executed at the end of his first appearance for murdering a Green Lantern in an insane attempt to get his ring. In Green Lantern The Animated Series, Iolande spares him and merely has him imprisoned, allowing him to return in a later episode as a Red Lantern.
Thunderbird in Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends. He was killed off in the X-Men comics after only three issues, but was still shown alive and well in the cartoon.
This is due to the episode being a Backdoor Pilot for an aborted X-Men cartoon where he would've been one of the main characters. Presumably, this was for the sake of diversity, since the only other non-white X-Man at the time was Storm.
Sunfire's uncle as well. Sunfire killed him at the end of his first appearance in the comics, but the show ended with him hospitalized instead.
The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes did an adaptation of the Secret Invasion story arc, where one of the most famous moments was Skrull leader Queen Veranke getting shot in the head by Norman Osborn, thus leading to Osborn's rise to power. Here however, she is merely neutralized at the end of the invasion and taken to custody in 42.
The Wasp also notably lives in the Secret Invasion adaptation. In the comic storyline she was killed off at the end and stayed deceased for a long time. It has only recently been revealed that she was shrunk down into the microverse.
Aquababy in Justice League. In Aquaman's first appearance he sacrifices a hand to save his infant son from being killed by Ocean Master. In the comics, Aquababy was killed by Black Manta.
Far more notable would be Howard Stark and Obadiah Stane.
In the Family Guy Star Wars spoofs Biggs Darklighter was spared because he was played by Joe, and therefore was already paralyzed and unable to participate in the Battle of Yavin.
The Batman The Animated Series episode ''The Laughing Fish" loosely adapts a 2-part comic story of the same name. In it, The Joker infects two random victims with a lethal dose of his joker venom. In the TAS version, since broadcasting standards wouldn't allow the writers to kill someone in a children's cartoon; instead, Batman is successfully able to administer an antidote to the venom after both get infected. Doesn't stop the scene from being any less freaky though.
The entire nation of Genosha in Wolverine and the X-Men. In Grant Morrison's New X-Men run, the whole island was destroyed by a Sentinel invasion, leaving only a handful of survivors. The attack is far less severe in the cartoon, with no onscreen fatalities.
