Undeath Always Ends

Sun rises, vampire falls.

"We belong dead!"

— Frankenstein's Monster, Bride of Frankenstein

The Undead are neither dead nor alive, nor do they last in that state particularly long. For whatever reason, most media showing an undead character with sentience will have said character not be undead by story's end. Sort of like Schrödinger's Zombie, they can stay in their 'inbetween' state for hundreds of years if unobserved (by an audience), but appearing in a movie will force them to be either Killed Off for Real or brought back to true life.

Maybe they're tired of Immortality and choose to end their existence or cure their undead state, or embrace it so thoroughly they confuse eternal youth with indestructibility and get cocky fighting the hero. Whatever the case, undeath does not grant one the ability to stay alive no matter what ... well, undead no matter what.

Whether a vampire, lich, mummy, or rarer fare, you can rest assured that by the story's end any notable undead character will not be undead because of one of the following:

• The character accepts their death or fulfills whatever duty kept them tethered to the world and rests in peace or ascends to the afterlife.
• The character is killed by someone else (hero, villain; doesn't matter which).
• The character, unhappy with their undead state, commits suicide or convinces the heroes to slay/vanquish/exorcise them. (Vampires favor Suicide by Sunlight.)
• The character kills themself inadvertently.
• The character dies in a Heroic Sacrifice.
• The character is restored to full life.

The extent to which this trope applies seems to be directly proportional to how much the portrayed version of undead can be said to fit and belong in the world once the story is over. Undead that can be empathized with, such as vampires, may very well continue existing indefinitely and be perfectly fine with it. Undead demonstrating angst over their situation, such as ghosts, demand closure and as such the narrative usually puts them out of their misery. Finally, the chance for assorted undead abominations such as zombies or Frankenstein's Monster to survive the show is vanishingly slim, as they are inherently unstable, seldom sentient and their condition is usually implied to be a Fate Worse than Death.

This is an (Un)Death Trope, so spoilers follow.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Xxx HO Li C and Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE- example- Yuko Ichihara. A full explanation would require an eight paragraph course in semi-made-up-by-CLAMP-mysticism, confusingness, multiple overly-complex-plan pileups, and would leave you more confused than educated. The short version is that a Reality Warper effectively made the universe ignore her death for several hundred years.
• Goes with the territory of the The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service — the main character's power allows him to temporarily coax the recently dead to talk (and move) again in order to finish business they left on earth, but this effect's length can usually be measured in minutes before they're done and pass on again. Other characters who can revive the dead also exist, but their powers are equally temporary — though in one girl's case it's because her powers cause the dead enormous pain and they become unreasoning monsters who must be put down.
• Bleach's afterlife is a bit messy and it's a little hard to say exactly how it fits into this trope. For starters, there are Pluses, good spirits. They have three possible outcomes: A) Be sent to Soul Society by a Shinigami, B) Get eaten by a Hollow, or C) Become a Hollow yourself. For Hollows, you A) Get killed by a Shinigami, sending your now pure spirit to Soul Society, B) Get killed by a Shinigami, sending your evil-as-a-human spirit to Hell, C) Get killed by a Quincy, AKA, end of the line, D) Get eaten by another, stronger Hollow, or E) Eat other Hollows and eventually become stronger forms of Hollows (and still run the risk of losing control to one or more of the other Hollows that've been eaten). It becomes even more confusing when you get to the Soul Society, and it remains unclear exactly what happens to souls eaten by a Hollow after a Shinigami purifies the Hollow that ate them (ie do all of them end up in Soul Society separately or does the purified Hollow arrive as a composite of all the souls it ate?)...
• Happens by the wazoo in Saint Seiya's Hades Saga. To both good guys and enemies.
• Any vampires, zombies or ghosts usually get defeated or pass on peacefully in Jojos Bizarre Adventure but there are some noteworthy exceptions.
  • A one-shot story reveals that Yoshikage Kira went onto live as an amnesiac ghost, having to make amends by working for a priest to have a chance for moving on to afterlife. By the end of the story he remains a spirit wandering the earth.
  • By the end of Part 5 Polnareff becomes a disembodied spirit bound by Coco Jumbo's stand room. He doesn't seem too distressed by his state though and remains as a spirit even as the story ends. The sequel novel even claims he became a high-ranking member of the reformed gang despite remaining a ghost.
• Played with in My Lovely Ghost Kana—Kana is still dead by the end of the manga, but her time with Daikichi has made her feel more alive than ever, which is why she shows no desire or need to leave the world.
• By the end of Inuyasha, both Kikyo (reanimated as a lifelike golem) and Onigumo (the dead human who serves as the heart of Naraku) are gone for good. Though Kikyo had already reincarnated as the time-traveling main heroine Kagome before (or centuries after) this.
• The Shiki are undead, but they're also mortal. They can be killed in numerous ways, such as being burned by the sun or by fire, getting their heads chopped off, or by having their hearts staked. Since can only digest blood and nothing else they can also die of starvation if they don't get blood.
• Kanoe Yuuko, the titular Cute Ghost Girl from Dusk Maiden of Amnesia, has been haunting her school for over fifty years, but due to Ghost Amnesia, doesn't remember why, and is surprisingly carefree about her situation. When she meets Teiichi, a boy who doesn't realize she's a ghost at first, they have a conversation that leads the two to form the Paranormal Investigation Club to look into the school's various ghost stories and try to figure out the circumstances behind Yuuko's death. They gradually fall in love. But eventually, they discover the horrible truth behind Yuuko's Cruel and Unusual Death and Teiichi helps her come to terms with it with The Power of Love. Unfortunately, the pain and resentment she had forgotten were anchoring her in the world of the living, and the closure she gains causes her to begin fading away against her will, just as her relationship with Teiichi was getting serious and she finally had a good reason to stay... only to unexpectedly return, because her separation from Teiichi was so painful that it served as a new regret to keep her lingering among the living. The story plays with this, in the end: Yuuko moving on has only been delayed, but when she does leave it will be with the man she loves.

Comics

• Averted in any and all depictions of Casper the Friendly Ghost.
• After Doomsday rips his arm off, Booster Gold bleeds out on the operating table - but contrives to do so during a period in which no one on Earth can be born or die. Though clinically dead, Booster fights on with the help of a new suit of armour (incorporating a prosthetic arm) that his BFF Ted Kord rigs up for him. When the stasis period ends and death returns to the DCU, Booster drops dead - only to open his eyes again moments later, the suit Ted built having (unbeknownst to anyone but Ted) incorporated a life-support system that will keep Booster going indefinitely. This long period of undeath - during which Booster is basically a zombie in a tin can - ends when Booster strikes a deal with Monarch to heal his wounds and let him remove the life-support armour.
• At the end of Preacher, the vampire Cassidy makes a deal with God to help him take out Genesis. In return, he made God promise that he and Jessie would live no matter what. After Cassidy immolated himself in sunlight, he reappears completely fine...watching a sunset as a human.
• Judge Dredd: Subverted. The Dark Judges are seemingly destroyed in their second appearance when Judge Anderson channels the energy of their millions of victims to destroy their spirits for good. It later turns out they were only weakened and are soon back up to their usual killing spree.
• In Zombies Christmas Carol this is initially subverted, as the zombies not being able to die is part of what makes them so horrifying and numerous. Played straight after Scrooge reforms, as zombies that needed death are granted it.

Fan Works

• Despite returning from the dead four times in The Lion King Adventures, Hago always dies in the same story.
  • Being immortal, Shocker hungers for death. The closest he gets is being buried alive by the Interceptor in The Interceptor's Challenge. This finally stops him for good.
• In Dead of Night, Vesser tells the Detective that since the zombified Hanna was very recently dead, a more powerful warlock ought to be able to bring him back to life. This never happens during the fic's run time though, and is subverted later, when it's revealed that Vesser was just lying to try to get more money out of them.
• In Being Dead Ain't Easy, Joey is in danger of dying while already dead and ceasing to exist.
• In the Harry Potter fic Cruciamentum Eternus, this is cruelly averted. Draco becomes a ghost in the beginning of the story, and the conclusion is a hundred years later, ending with him saying he supposes he always will be.
• In the Better Bones AU, SkyClan is plagued by rats which are actually the spirits of their dead ancestors that, due to SkyClan being exiled from the other Clans and their ancestors being thus separated from the other Clan's afterlife of StarClan, cannot fade away like normal spirits. Firestar, Brokenstar and the reconstituted SkyClan are ultimately able to defeat the rats and allow the spirits of cats they once were to rest.

Films — Animated

• At the conclusion of Corpse Bride, when Victor chooses to marry Victoria, the titular undead bride wishes them luck and then disappears into butterflies. Presumably she ascended to some higher plane rather than the afterlife seen in the movie.
• After the possessed house in Monster House is destroyed, the spirit of the woman who haunted it is briefly reunited with her husband before departing into the afterlife.
• Played straight with Mr. Prenderghast, Agatha, and the Puritan zombies in ParaNorman, who fade into the afterlife after Norman helps them. Averted with his grandmother and the other friendly ghosts in town, who are all still around at the end of the film.
• Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island: The countless people who have had their souls drained by the werecats are cursed to continue living as zombies, fully aware of their fate but unable to pass on to the afterlife after losing their lives, or do anything besides try to warn other people away from Moonscar Island so they don’t suffer the same fate. The climax sees Mystery Inc. and the zombies stall the werecats long enough to miss their deadline to drain more souls, causing them to die, and for all the zombies to disintegrate, their souls finally being allowed to move on in peace.

Films — Live-Action

• The end of Let the Right One In averts this trope in that Eli is still "living" as a vampire at the end of the film. What's more, "she" now has Oskar with her whom she might turn into a vampire as well, or keep around as her new caretaker (it's never mentioned how old that father figure was when he first met here). It could be argued that before she met Oskar, Eli was unhappy with her vampiric existence, but meeting Oskar gave her a new lease on unlife.
• In the movie Fright Night (1985), Jerry Dandrige (vampire) and his ghoul servant end up dead, and Charley's girlfriend Amy (turned into a vampire) is returned to life. But subverted in the movie's final frames, where we learn that Evil Ed was only playing possum.
• Averted in the Eddie Murphy vehicle Vampire in Brooklyn. Early in the film Murphy's vampire recruits another character as a "ghoul" (basically a sentient decaying zombie) to serve him. After Murphy has been "destroyed", his body turns into mist and floats away. The "mist" laughs and drops his ring to his limo, flying off into the night. The ghoul, who is sat in the back of the limo, tries the ring on. This turns him into a vampire as well. So he is still undead by the end of the movie, but has received a complimentary upgrade to Undead Deluxe.
• Averted in Shaun of the Dead. At the end of the movie, Shaun's friend Ed who was turned into a zombie ends up chained up in the shed, playing video games. All rather poetic, considering Ed was still "living" exactly as he had before dying. Much like a metaphorical zombie turning into a literal one.
• Innocent Blood: The original vampire tries to kill herself at the end, but is stopped.
• Near Dark ends with the rest of the vampires dead and the main character and his love interest cured of vampirism through a complete blood replacement.
• Averted in The Devil's Backbone - although Santi accomplishes his Ghostly Goals, and so does Dr. Casares who died need the end of the film, neither of them are able to pass on and remain stuck at the orphanage while everyone else leaves. It is suggested that souls can't reach Heaven because the desert is too hot.
• Zigzagged in Crimson Peak, Guillermo del Toro's other ghost movie. It's unclear whether the ghosts of Thomas' past wives, his mother, and his child are still haunting Allerdale Hall at the movie's end, but Thomas himself does indeed cross over. However, the final shot of the movie shows that Lucille's ghost continues to haunt the house.
• Averted in Beetlejuice, where everyone stays a ghost.
• The Mummy (2017): Subverted. By the end of the film Nick uses Set's power to take away Ahmanet's lifeforce, but the fact that the Prodigium goes through the effort of resealing her corpse back inside her warded sarcophagus indicates that she's still not truly destroyed.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
  • During the Battle of Minas Tirith, Eowyn manages to kill the Witch-King, a disembodied spirit occupying a human suit of armor who used to be a mortal man, presumably destroying him for good. The other Ring Wraiths are seen to burst into flames after the destruction of the One Ring, too.
  • Aragorn releases the Army of the Dead from the curse that his ancestor Isildur had placed on them, allowing them to finally pass into the afterlife.
• Averted in The Haunting (1963). It's unclear whether there even are ghosts at Hill House, but if there are, their number increases by one at the story's end.

Literature

• In Frankenstein, it is implied that the creature committed suicide by burning to death.
• In Bram Stoker's Dracula, the title character, his three vampire "brides" (who were probably turned years beforehand) and Lucy Westenra (changed into a vampire) are all killed.
• Discworld:
  • Death dislikes immortality in general for this reason. Everything dies eventually, regardless of any undeath or Soul Jars they use to prolong their life, so Death basically has to reap them twice. He has enough work to do as it is.
  • Averted with zombies, most of whom have jobs like policemen and lawyers. One exception is Windle Poons who becomes a zombie at the start of Reaper Man (due to the Death Takes a Holiday situation) and dies at the end.
• Harry Potter:
  • Averted in the early books but then played straight with all but the house ghosts, and they probably wish they could get this treatment.
  • Harry Potter has kind of a sorting algorithm of (un)deadness going on. Almost every form of cheating death (being a ghost, unicorn blood, Horcruxes, the Resurrection Stone) has at least one major drawback to the user or those around them. The Philosopher's Stone is the only exception, with no apparent downside but having to rely on its elixir. Its only known users (Nicolas Flamel and Perenelle) simply grow tired and choose to see what comes next.
• The plot of Stephen King's Pet Sematary circles around the concept that the dead should stay dead.
  • And in fact they do. The corpses that revive after burial in the Pet Sematary are different creatures than the ones who died, the original owners are gone. The problem of the Pet Sematary is rooted in the desire to deny the reality of death, it's the 'come on' that enables the demonic power to get at them.
• Xanth has the Zombie King. His power is to create zombies. They nearly always remain zombies, although if they are given love and treated like real people they can recover from their rotted state and appear alive again. Oddly, the Zombie King is not himself a zombie; he was for a while, but he recovered thanks to a potion he himself created without knowing who it was really for (Stable Time Loop is involved).
• Death Knight Lord Soth from the Dragonlance books was turned Human and subsequently killed in the War of Souls trilogy.
  • This also happened to Ausric Krell in the Dark Disciple Trilogy, he was turned Human by Mina. He was given some powers over undead by Chemosh to compensate for the loss of his Death Knight powers, but he was still defeated and killed by Rhys near the end of the third book.
• Played with in World War Z. Near the end of the book, the "first generation" zombies are basically being worn down to nothing, but there's still no cure for zombieism save a kiss goodbye, a stiff drink, and a bullet between the eyes.
• Averted like all get out in Dragaera. Sethra Lavode is a vampire and intends to stay that way. Since she's so powerful that even the gods stay out of her way, she's likely to remain so. She did once tell Vlad that under certain (very unlikely) circumstances she'd consider her existence fulfilled and "become part of the rock of Dzur Mountain again".
• Laura Moon in American Gods chooses death over undeath(or possibly full restoration) in the end.
• In the end of Warm Bodies, some of the zombies (presumably the ones still intact enough to function) start to come back alive.
• Mixed bag in the Betsy the Vampire Queen series: the vampires (mostly) survive, the zombie gets killed, and most of the ghosts go off to Heaven (or wherever), except for one who chooses to stick around.
• Averted in Anne Rice's The Mummy, or Ramses the Damned. The Elixir of Life makes living creatures totally indestructible. If chopped to pieces, the parts will become independently animate. If incinerated, they will reconstitute. Naturally, the full ramifications of this are utterly horrifying once grasped.
• Averted and played straight in The Death Gate Cycle. Prince Edmund frees many of the undead in a drawn-out campaign of attrition, but remains undead himself. Hugh the Hand is allowed to die before the final battle against Sang-Drax.
• Coldfire Trilogy: Gerald Tarrant, aka The Hunter, got nine hundred years of undeath thanks to a bargain with The Unnamed. But by the end of the third book, he sacrifices his life to defeat Calesta, and then the Mother of the Iezu restores him to human life for complicated reasons. And then he has a heart attack, but Damien heals him. And then his great-great-great-grandson goes after him for murdering his family, cuts off his head and throws it on a bonfire. It was a trick, and he walks away in the end.
• Played straight in the ending of Harry Dresden's undeath. He had himself killed to avoid letting Mab have use of his services. Being restored to life foiled his scheme.
• In Alethea Kontis's Enchanted, the ghost of Rumbold's mother goes on at the end, after they've defeated the king.
• Guiliette the Wili, in Fortune's Fool, manages to time her ascension to Heaven in such a way that her transformation into light blinds her Jinn captor (and blasts open a spring, which lets Katya start using her water magic).
• Gilbert in The Witch Watch turns out to be animated by someone's stolen life-force, and has to die for good to bring her back. He spends most of the novel actually looking forward to doing this, having been zombified unwillingly (and by mistake) anyway and generally being none-too-fond of his undead status.
• The undead army in An Army of the Dead return to their dead state just after they finish killing their enemies and digging their graves.
• Averted in China Mieville's Bas-Lag Cycle. There's even a nation that revolves around the stability of being ruled by the eternal abdead.
• The Dark Elf Trilogy: In Exile, Matron Do-Urden resurrects Drizzt's previously sacrificed father Zaknafein back as a zin-carla, a mindless undead that is then compelled to hunt down and kill Drizzt. At the end of the book, Zak regains his consciousness for a brief moment, and throws himself into an acid pit to destroy himself before Matron Do-Urden can regain control.
• Steel Crow Saga: Tala binds her dying brother Dimangan's spirit as a Shade Familiar, which is seen as the darkest of The Dark Arts and inflicts nasty Soul Pains on them both. In the final battle, his Shadepact is severed and he dies for good, which devastates Tala but is strongly implied to save them both from an untenable, terribly painful situation.
• Johannes Cabal: Zig-zagged with Horst the vampire. He commits Suicide by Sunlight at the end of Book 1, having decided that his brother has become irredeemable and his own death is overdue. In Book 4, he's magically restored to unlife, a feat that's generally impossible to work on normal humans. Finally, at the end of the series, the Fountain of Youth transforms him into a Dhampyr with the benefits of both vampirism and true life.
• Varney the Vampire ends with the title character committing suicide by jumping into the crater of Mt. Vesuvius.

Live-Action TV

• Lost Double Subverted this. It was revealed in season 6 that the whispers heard throughout the show are the tormented souls of people who died on the Island and couldn't move on. In the DVD-only epilogue, however, Ben and Hurley bring Walt back to the Island, and it's heavily implied they plan to use Walt's powers to help the spirits, which include his father, move on.
• Angel subverted this; much of the series was spent building up the fact that Angel would play a major role in the apocalypse, after which he would become human. However, he threw it all away at the very end to give two fingers to the demons who secretly run the planet.
• Dead Like Me plays it straight, surprisingly. While the reapers are indeed undead and stay that way for decades, they do eventually get to go to Heaven— or a reasonable generic facsimile thereof. So do all the one-episode ghosts throughout the series.
• Torchwood had a particularly disturbing variant on this: Owen is turned into a kind of undead in the middle of the series and remains that way until almost the end of the series. He can't feel pain, can't eat or drink (since food just sits in his stomach), any wounds sustained do not heal (and have to be sewn up weekly) and worst of all, he can no longer have sex. At the end of the series, he "dies" when he is trapped in a nuclear reactor and his body literally melts into goo, with him remaining conscious until the very end.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • In one episode, a student from Buffy's school reanimates the body of his dead brother (who says he shouldn't have been brought back) and stitches together parts of different women to make him a girlfriend. Buffy and company are spared the moral dilemma of deciding his fate when a fire breaks out in the house and the corpse-brother dies while trying to retrieve his future bride.
  • Implicitly averted in general, given that vampires appear to be very hard for anyone but a Slayer to kill, and there generally being only a single Slayer at a time until first there is Kendra, and then Faith, and at the very end a few hundred of them. Soulless vampires are not depicted as suffering from the sort of remorse or ennui that would lead one of them to embrace being even deader, and they generally don't want to become living or believe they can.
• Kai from Lexx wins a game with the Big Bad to restore him to life, but Prince goes back on his word... or so we think. In the final episode of the series, he makes Kai truly alive - just so he'll lose his Made of Iron tendencies and become truly dead in the explosion when he takes out the other villains' asteroid-ship. Kai does not survive.
• Constable Bob Fraser from Due South is able to move on in the Grand Finale, only after Benton brings his wife's murderer to justice.
• Often averted in Ghost Whisperer, as there are some spirits that choose to remain earthbound or to join with the mysterious dark forces that the writers seem to have forgotten they introduced back in the first season.
• American Horror Story: Coven: Given that almost the entire main cast had come Back from the Dead at some point in the season, most of them end up dead by the end anyway:
  • Marie Laveau and Delphine La Laurie, both immortal and unable to die, end up trapped in Hell by Papa Legba.
  • Madison Montgomery, murdered by Fiona, resurrected by Misty Day, murdered again by Kyle.
  • Myrtle Snow, burned at the stake ( by Fiona's doing), resurrected by Misty Day, burned at the stake again ( at her own insistence).
  • Misty Day, killed several times, each time revived by her powers of resurgence, eventually trapped in her own personal Hell.
  • Kyle Spencer and Zoe Benson both come back from the dead and stay alive, Spalding and Fiona both die and do not return to life.
• The Umbrella Academy (2019) has Ben Hargreeves as a ghost that can only be seen by Klaus. In the end of Season 2, he pulls a Heroic Sacrifice to ensure that his brothers and sister can return to the present without the risk of the apocalypse.

Religion & Mythology

• This trope seems to stem directly from most concepts of an afterlife depicting it as something conveniently happening someplace far away where the dead can't bother the living anymore. The notion of dead people actually hanging around in the same world as the not-yet-dead thus violates the 'natural order', which of course can't be allowed to stand...
• In folklore even Undeath by Choice never really works out. In Russian Folklore Koschei the Undying has separated his soul from his body, rendering him, well, Undying and then protected his soul with an elaborate series of wards. He goes on to get really-we-mean-it killed in *every* appearance he makes in folklore.
• The Bible inverts this. Many references to the souls of the damned have them with corpse-like attributes (i.e. worms going through them) and this will be retained after the Great Resurrection. On the other end, Heaven is very explicitly referred to as both "life after death" and "everlasting", so another big inversion there. Arguably played straight with the saints, who will be resurrected as immortal humans.

Tabletop RPG

• The World of Darkness does this on a case-by-case basis.
  • Generally, players of Vampire: The Masquerade or Vampire: The Requiem are going to want to keep their characters alive as long as possible, individually averting it. In the background material, few vampires are over a thousand or so years old (most of the canon characters are under 300), though this is less from ennui (the cure for that is the deathlike sleep called torpor) than from the backstabbing, predatory nature of Kindred existence.
  • In Promethean: The Created, the Created want to end their undying, unliving nature by completing the Great Work and becoming human, but frankly, can you blame them? Even then, Mr. Verney, Frankenstein's Monster, is still going after several centuries, much to his regret. Note that, although Prometheans generally only get a couple centuries, "going to the wastes" (complete isolation from humanity and their powers) can extend this clock, which many take advantage of to extend their deadline to complete the Great Work; White Wolf leaves it open whether Verney and the other Progenitors (founders of Promethean lines) are truly immortal or just punctual about going to the wastes.
  • In Mummy: The Resurrection, the Undying spend time 'temporarily undead'. When they die for the first time, they're undead until they receive the Spell of Life, which returns them to true life and grants them Resurrective Immortality. Every time they die after that, their spirit spends some time in the Underworld before resurrection. It takes exceptional circumstances to finally kill them - utter annihilation or a genuine desire to die.
  • The wraiths of Wraith: The Oblivion have three options: Oblivion, and utter destruction; Transcendence, and an ambiguous fate; or remain in the Underworld. Some older wraiths have been around for thousands of years.
• As a rule, undead in standard Dungeons & Dragons are evil because they're animated by "negative energy." Even the completely mindless ones. Therefore, lesser undead tend to fall by the dozen before player characters, and greater (intelligent) undead are also in the queue to be eliminated eventually, usually as bosses of some stripe or another. Individual settings shake things up a bit more, with prominent lich and vampire NPCs in some, and whole nations that revere or employ undead in others.
  • Eberron being particularly notable, where one nation, Karrnath, employs intelligent undead in its armies and whose king is secretly a vampire — and is in fact the most peaceful, caring monarch around (just don't threaten him, his people, or the peace). The elven nation of Aerenal animate "deathless," undead fueled by positive energy, as a living afterlife for their greatest citizens. There's also a semi-popular religion that reveres undeath as the path to immortality.
  • Second Edition AD&D also had a unique form of Elven Lich that 'lived' for the sole purpose of hunting down other undead and destroying them. As this would clearly not be possible simply because they occur more rapidly than the elven kind can kill them, and that such endeavors are innately dangerous, it's not certain whether or not they would live that much longer than a normal elf would, especially in worlds where Elves can count their potential lifespans in millenia and not centuries.
  • Shows up also in a host of Forgotten Realms modules and books, including several moments where the various undead elves complain about being dead for so long, despite canonically only approaching old age as an elf. Averted, however, for priests of Jergal^note Lawful Neutral former god of the dead, currently archivist to primary god of the dead Kelemvor, who sometimes turn themselves into liches so they can continue their work cataloguing death (as opposed to adding to it).
  • The Marut is a type of construct called an Inevitable. Each type of Inevitable is charged with enforcing some sort of universal constant: in the Marut's case it's that everything eventually dies. To this end, they hunt down and destroy particularly long-lived undead (as well as anyone else who takes extreme or unnatural measures to prolong their lifespans).
• Shrouds in Anathema may "live" for a very long time, but eventually their will score will hit 0 and they'll cease to exist. How quickly this happens depends on the actions of the player.

Video Games

• D in Another Code moves on to the next life if you get the good ending. And in the second game, you lay to rest Kelly, Matt's dead little sister.
• Call of Duty: Zombies: Alcatraz prison now functions as a purgatory pocket dimension run by evil dark forces, with the souls of all the inmates trapped there for untold years, including the protagonists of Mob of the Dead. The follow-up, Blood of the Dead, sees the dimension’s master Brutus finally defeated, and all the souls of the inmates are finally able to move on to the afterlife, freeing them from their eternal purgatory.
• All of the Unsent in Final Fantasy X and its sequel are eventually sent to the afterlife, generally by Yuna, willingly or not.
• Final Fantasy Tactics A2 has the "miraculously returned to life" variant, in which Frimelda Loticce is cured of being a zombie and becomes a party member.
• Heroes of Might and Magic III: The end of the campaign does multiple versions, the revived king Gryphonheart kills his original murderer in a darkly humorous cutscene. His soul then leaves his body.
• World of Warcraft: This trope is both played straight and averted.
  • Named members of the Scourge are exclusively killable targets. At this point, even the Lich King himself has been killed. Kel'Thuzad was killed and arose as a lich in Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, was defeated in World of Warcraft, and then brought back once only to be beaten again, and Anub'Arak has been taken down, presumably for good.
  • There is a quest chain devoted to bringing the lich Ras Frostwhisper back to life as a human... so he can be killed without self resurrecting.
  • The Forsaken are clearly rotting, yet it seems that they'll stick around for a while given that they're a playable race. The death knights who turned against Arthas are also playable, so they're likely to remain undead as well.
  • There are also undead whose age is measured in hundreds of years, like Dalar Dawnweaver (probable founder of Dalaran) and Meryl Winterstorm (founding member of the Council of Tirisfal), so it's unlikely that they'll be going away anytime soon.
    • In Cataclysm, Sylvanas decides to openly defy this trope after getting killed in an ambush and experiencing The Nothing After Death that Arthas mentioned. Once resurrected by her Val'kyr, she proclaims that she can't let herself or The Forsaken die off.
• After being resurrected in the Shadowrun First-Person Shooter, you will explode if you die again, either from losing all your Hit Points (again) or from bleeding out after the teammate who resurrected you dies.
• Gungrave: Beyond the Grave is an undead protagonist, has been undead for almost twenty years (though most of that time was spent sleeping), and stays undead throughout both games. The animation ends quite differently: he and Harry perform mutually-assisted suicide after realizing the flaws that led to their downfall.
• Anyone who is resurrected using the life crystals in The Dig is generally killed off again very quickly, from the alien wildlife (you can resurrect an alien turtle, but he'll just get eaten or explode seconds later...or if you screwed it up, he'll turn into slime) to major characters like the Alien Inventor, who kills himself and seals himself inside a crystal after you're done talking to him, and Brink (as well as Maggie, if you choose to resurrect her), although Brink and Maggie's deaths are undone again at the end of the game.
• This is a major plot point of Tsukihime. Dead Apostles, even though they're vampires, will eventually die sooner or later, so some of them have to get creative to extend their lifespans. Nrvnqsr Chaos does this by fusing with different beasts, Michael Roa Valdamjong does this through reincarnation, and Night of Wallachia does this by manifesting himself as a materialized fear or rumor.
• Tales of Monkey Island: With the help of The Power of Love (and the Crossroads Exit spell), Guybrush comes Back from the Dead, and from his undead state, at the end of Chapter 5.
  • Averted, however, with LeChuck. Although his undead form, whatever that may be, is destroyed in each game, he always comes back.
• In Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, Guybrush resurrects Rapp Scallion, but it's only temporal.
• Zig-zagged in Professor Layton and the Unwound Future, in which Claire, was thought to be dead, is alive, albeit a few years later. But time travel is unstable, so she has to go back to the time she came from, and die.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Daggerfall:
    • This is the Underking's goal throughout the main quest. He seeks the Mantella (which he refers to as his "heart" and which later works imply is a soul gem containing his soul) so that he can destroy it and finally be allowed to die. As a result of the Merging the Branches of the game's Multiple Endings, he is the only part to get exactly what he wants.
    • Averted for Mannimarco, the Lich/Necromancer. He seeks the Mantella in order to use it to become a god, and he succeeds...sort of. Due to the Broad Strokes used in the Merging the Branches endings as shown in later games, he does succeed in becoming the God of Worms...but it leaves behind a still-undead "mortal" version King of Worms whose cult now worships the God of Worms. In any case, he averts this trope as he survives the events of the game, still quite undead.
  • In Oblivion, Mannimarco returns as the primary villain of the Mages Guild questline. This time, he plays the trope straight, as he is slain by the Champion of Cyrodiil.
  • Skyrim's Dawnguard DLC revolves around the conflict between the eponymous Dawnguard, an order of vampire hunters, and a group of ancient vampires led by Lord Harkon, who seeks the means to blot out the sun. The Dragonborn can swing the conflict to either side, but in either case, Lord Harkon must killed, ending his reign as quite possibly the most ancient vampire in Tamriel.
• Subverted in Aveyond 3 for the vampires Te'ijal and Galahad. Though they get restored to life near the end of the second chapter, by the end of the game both are vampires again.
• In The Dead Case, ghosts can pass on to the next life, but they need to perform a ritual involving the cooperation of various ghosts in the area. The protagonist attempts this, but fails because he still had unfinished business he needed to take care of. It's also subverted at the end, when the other ghosts stay behind and find purpose amongst the living.
• Subverted in Haunting Starring Polterguy: In the very end, poltergeist Polterguy turns into his human form after he has driven out the Sardinis the fourth time (without any foreshadowing that this would be possible). A second later, he's slammed with an anvil and turns back into his ghost form again.
• The undead Queen Frieda has this happen to her at the end of One Way Heroics, if you get her ending. The spell animating her body wears off as she's enjoying a parade, smiling.
• In all endings of Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse, the undead protagonist Nanashi loses his Resurrective Immortality. Right after his death at the start of the game, he can refuse to make the Deal with the Devil that makes him undead, and will be treated to a Nonstandard Game Over. He can also refuse to be resurrected after dying in battle. During the Law ending, Nanashi dies for good when he sides with an angel who wants to wipe out Tokyo, himself included. During the Chaos ending, Nanashi accepts Lucifer's offer of a new demonic body. During the Bonds ending, Nanashi is completely revived as a normal human. During the Massacre ending, Nanashi becomes a god.
• One of your party members in Pathfinder: Kingmaker, Jaethal, is an undead elf, specifically a priestess of Urgathoa, goddess of undeath and hedonism. One ending to her companion questline has her refuse to sacrifice her surving daughter to her patron and renounce her faith, upon which a Bolt of Divine Retribution strikes her dead. Surprisingly this is part of the Golden Path: she comes Back for the Finale.
• Divinity: Original Sin II: Eithne the librarian became undead by accident, hates it, and deliberately takes life-threatening risks. Her personal quest involves finding her a Spell Book to destroy herself. Zig-zagged when her spirit reappears, bored with the afterlife and looking for away to become undead again.
  "I'm just going to find a place to rest... a place where I can be how I am supposed to be..."
• In Guild Wars 2 Path of Fire Palawa Joko is not merely undead but immortal. No matter how much his body is damaged, he will eventually restore himself with his power intact; this is why Turai Ossa imprisoned him centuries ago rather than destroying him. At the end of "Long Live the Lich" he is finally killed when Aurene devours his magic, taking his immortality for herself.

Webcomics

• In The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, DRACULA, KING OF ALL VAMPIRES! is fully aware of this trope, and is prepared to end his existence. However, he wants to know beforehand what awaits in the afterlife, so through an alias, he funds the research of the clone of Benjamin Franklin to create an immortality serum, which actually turns out to be a serum that turns Ben into a Headless Horseman, all so he would have the ability to escape the afterlife and report back on it. Turns out purgatory is a restaurant with really bad service. Dracula then attempts to recruit Doc to die, use his ninja guile to make it past the restaurant, and see what lies beyond it, since Doc had already survived a near-death experience. Doc prefers not to take him up on the offer.
  • In the final arc, Dracula has sided with King Radical against McNinja, but during the final showdown, Doc manages to force a collision that results in Drac biting Radical, turning him into a vampire. He then uses Pope Francis to destroy Radical. Dracula tries to escape through his teleporter, but Dark Smoke Puncher hacks it to send him to the middle of a desert on the other side of the world where it's midday, and the sun vaporizes him.
• Drowtales: "The dead should stay dead" is the Kyorl clan's attitude; we shall see if they were right....
• Erfworld:
  • "Uncroaked" units last for only a limited time before they decay. Many strategy games give newly created undead a limited "lifespan" as a game balance thing - otherwise the side who can turn all casualties undead would get an unfair advantage in the long run.
  • This is later averted by Prince Ansom and other "Decrypted" created by the arkenpliers. Which, of course, proved it justified in the first place, as in Book 2, Wanda and her decrypted army are marching across the world nearly unopposed. This is literally a game changer for the story. The "uncroaked" retain no memories or skills of their former selves, decay after a few turns (depending on how much juice was spent for their "unroacking") and mostly used as cannon fodder. The "decrypted" however have their memories, skills, bonuses (if they had any) require no upkeep (a big deal) and are unquestioningly loyal to their new side. Or rather everyone (even themselves) think they are loyal. At first.
• Averted so far in Sluggy Freelance. Supporting character Sam became a vampire back in 1998, and he's still a vampire, and still a supporting character. It helps that his attitude is pretty non-confrontational and he's the last active member of a vampire clan with a really obscure Kryptonite Factor.
  • Played straighter when it comes to ghosts: while Unfinished Business is a factor, most of the ghosts encountered would have moved on normally if not for specific binding magic, which is removed within the same chapter as the ghost's introduction ("The Road to Björkea") or in the direct sequel published a year and a half later ("Brie Meighsaton House"/"Kesandru's Well"). The longest-lasting ghost is Mr. Squeeky-bobo, and even his undead torment ends with the same war that claimed his life.
• In Scary Go Round, Shelley was murdered and brought back as a zombie, but became a normal living human again after being struck by lightning.
• Averted in Indefensible Positions, where Dead Debbie, an undead protagonist, stays undead.
• This is becoming a serious concern for Richard of Looking for Group. Whether due to the breaking of his demonic contract or growing desire for his abandoned humanity, Richard is slowly becoming more human each day. The only thing that reverses this is killing innocents, but he finds himself increasingly reluctant to do so. This also extends to the undead villagers who he rules over; as they get their power from him they are also becoming mortal, seemingly even faster than Richard.
• In The Kingfisher, most of the vampires don't seem like they're going to fall into this trope... until they get older. The elder vampires find ways to die left and right.
• In The Order of the Stick, Malack is a vampire and has been around for over 200 years, making him the oldest character in the comic, even older than Xykon. Nale kills him after the destruction of Girard's Gate.
  • Vampire!Durkon, on the other hand, is eventually returned to life. Or more precisely, the vampiric spirit possessing his body is destroyed, allowing him to be properly resurrected.
• Subverted in Hanna Is Not a Boy's Name. While it's sort of implied at the beginning that there's some way to bring zombies back to life, Zombie specifically says that he has no interest in that happening. No attempts to hurt or kill him succeed (his limbs can be safely sewn back on) and he's returned to his normal undead state after being exorcised of Lee's ghost.
• In El Goonish Shive, all of the Aberrations ever seen meet their end by the end of the "Sister 3" arc.

Western Animation

• Downplayed in the Fangface episode "A Creep From the Deep", in which an Aztec mummy rises up from the Gulf of Mexico to terrorize an island community after his sacred treasure is stolen. Early in the episode, we're told this has happened at least once before, and while the story ends with the heroes giving the treasure back to the mummy, who returns to his watery grave, it's made very clear that he could rise again if anyone else messes with his treasure.
• Zig-zagged in the Adventure Time miniseries Stakes: Marceline has her vampirism removed, but in doing so brings several evil vampires she'd slain Back from the Dead. Ultimately, most of the vampire are again dead, the Vampire King has his vampirism cured successfully, and Marceline returns to being a vampire.
• The ghost of Cassidy from the second season of W.I.T.C.H. is eventually brought back to life and reunited with her mother. It's never explained how this happened or how everyone reacted to someone who'd been dead for several decades suddenly showing up again.

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