A villain is defeated and suffers a horrific Disney Death. Their body is shattered beyond repair. No One Could Survive That!
But later, he returns! Only this time, he's a cyborg! He's got more power, and he's less human so it's OK to bemore brutalon him.
Heroes are occasionally subject to this trope. Unlike villains, this tends to make them question their humanity, and in doing so retain it.
This trope can serve as the Origin Story for both heroes and villains of the cybernetic variety.
Compare with Robot Me and Virtual Ghost. The fantasy counterpart is Came Back Strong. If the cybernetics are obvious and enhance the evilness of a character's appearance, it's a case of Red Right Hand. When the one doing the rebuilding is sadistic enough, it may involve Vader Breath. If the injuries are too extensive or the technology not far enough advanced, may result in Man in the Machine. A nasty variant is when a bad guy takes a Not Quite Dead hero and has him Reforged into a Minion.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
Frieza from Dragon Ball Z. Lampshaded in the English dub, even paraphrasing the page quote. Unfortunately for him, he still gets curb-stomped by a Future Badass (and if Trunks hadn't come along, Goku would've just teleported there and done the same thing).
He wasn't the first one—Mercenary Tao Pai Pai did it in the original Dragon Ball.
Sort-of happens to Cooler in the movies. As part of his "like Frieza, but more" approach, he gets an army of cool robot bodies while what's left of the original is hooked up to the spaceship controlling him.
Dr Gero did this to himself, becoming "Android 20". He also programmed a supercomputer to think exactly like him and continue his work in the event of his death.
And apparently Commander Red in Dragon Ball Online.
A rather hilarious one takes place in Dr Slump when a bear being returned to the wild is shot. Before administering any other help or considering any other options, Senbei declares "I might still be able to make him a cyborg!" He succeeds at this.
An interesting take on it is Stroheim from the second part of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. He first appears to be a villain, proves to be a Noble Demon, performs a Heroic Sacrifice in an attempt to destroy Santana, then returns later as a cyborg... just in time to pull a Heel Face Turn.
And then gets chopped in half by Cars, only to come back AGAIN even more cyborged up in time for the grand finale. Best Nazi character EVER!
Jeremiah Gottwald in Code Geass has pulled this one twice now.
Technically the second time was just the completed version. He awakened prematurely the first time, and his cybernetic upgrades were not yet finished.
In Inuyasha, Ginkotsu was a cyborg all along, but when he blew up, Renkotsu chopped his head off and mounted it on a tank chassis, along with 50 or so rocket launchers.
Bartholomew Kuma was rebuilt as well, but it's not quite certain whether he needed to be. Also, He went further than Franky did, and completely became a machine.
The Social Welfare Agency from the anime Gunslinger Girl rebuilds little girls who have suffered tragically and are listed as terminal, using cybernetic technology and psychological conditioning (read: brainwashing) to turn them into assassins. Cybernetics Eat Your Soul is played up for all its tragedy in this series.
Professional Killer Laura from Mnemosyne is rebuilt with a cybernetic body. It is hinted that the sadistic Big Bad dissected her before doing so.
Iwata in the Excel Saga manga dies abruptly of colon cancer and is rebuilt as an android. He does not mind, but everyone else is a little weirded out, especially when he forgets to do human things and casually damages his body.
The backstories of two main characters of GaoGaiGar is this. Guy Shishioh had his spaceship crashed with the EI-01, supposedly killing him, but he was brought back to base by Galeon, and was rebuilt as a cyborg to save his life. Meanwhile, his cousin Renais Cardiff Shishioh was captured by a terrorist organization and rebuilt into a cyborg so she obeys their orders (eventually she rebelled).
The Major in Hellsing although the original manga never got around explaining how he became one. Fans speculate that the prequel series will show what happened between the time he is assumed to be still made of flesh and the not-so-human plot twist fifty years later.
The 2000 anime Sin: The Movie uses this trope, as well. A flashback shows lead character Blade gunned down and fatally injured, only to be save by being rebuilt with cybernetic parts, which end up coming in handy eventually.
Jinno in Afro Samurai was originally mortally wounded in a mass battle for the number two headband. He was remade as cyborg by the insane cyborg scientist Dharman. Jinno the cyborg was a superhumanly strong and skilled swordsman, but was defeated and (supposedly) killed twice by Afro. When he was rebuilt a third time, he apparently was so turbo-charged, he could slap Afro around all day long. But Jinno's last act in his tortured unlife was to remember his love for Afro as a sword brother, and defended Afro's life. Dying himself as a man, rather than an evil wartoy.
The original A.D. Police OVA series (a Bubblegum Crisis spinoff) had an episode revolve around "The Man Who Bites His Tongue", a police officer who was rebuilt with nothing organic left besides his brain and his tongue - which he began compulsively biting to hold on to his humanity. It doesn't end well, naturally.
Tenchi Muyo GXP: Would-be Knight of Cerebus Tarant Shank goes through several rounds of this after humiliating defeats. It never helps.
In the anime/manga Dragon Half, villainous knight Damuramu gets defeated when he accidentally stabs himself in the head with his own sword. In his next appearance - even though he had no other body part injured - he's had everything below his neck replaced with magical bionics by a friendly blacksmith. Except his head. (He even had his flying mount replaced with a robotic version, although this was necessary because the Good Guys ate the original.)
This is Kiddy Phenil's back story in Silent Möbius. After being carved up with Razor Floss by a serial killer named Wire, she is rebuilt as a cyborg much stronger than a normal human. An omake strip even has teammate Lebia trying to convince her to cosplay as RoboCop.
Ghost in the Shell is set in a future where this trope is used to remedy all manner of injuries. Apparently replacing damaged organs with real ones is preferable since they require no expensive and time consuming maintainance (Blessed with Suck), but cybernetics can always be used as a last ditch option.
In every version, the Major openly states that the reason she works for the government is because it pays for the very expensive maintenance of her state of the art cybernetic body.
The Tachikoma are fully artificial beings who share all their experiences with each other and have a complete backup of these made every day. They get blown up and shot to pieces all the time, but can upload their minds into new bodies any time. Which actually causes them quite some concern, as their inability to experience death prevents them from Becoming A Real Boy.
Possibly the first anime example—Detective Azuma, the eponymous Eighth Man.
Gintama, being the Post ModernGag Series that it is, doesn't just do this to one of the characters... it does this to Hideaki Sorachi - Gintama's author! During the Character Popularity Poll Arc *
Yes, Sorachi made an entire arc out of a Character Popularity Poll!
, Tae freaks at ranking lower than two "monkeys" (Kondo and Sorachi's Author Avatar), so she breaks the fourth wall to kill Sorachi. Next chapter/episode, he's rebuilt as a cyborg!
Abullah in Pluto. He thinks he's one of these. In reality, portions of his memory caused a superpowerful robot to think it was him and the human Abullah is dead.
This trope was played straight with Raiden of Angel Cop. For some reason his conversion to a cyborg also involves a personality change.
Franken Fran rebuilds lots of people, not always for the better, some of whom didn't actually need rebuilding before Fran got her hands on them.
Ichiban Ushiro No Daimaou has Eiko killing her father to become the new Teruya head. She's in for a bit of a surprise when he returns as a cyborg.
In Naruto, Madara rebuilt Obito by replacing the crushed half of his body with Hashirama's cells.
In the manga version of Sailor Moon, Hotaru/Sailor Saturn was made into a cyborg after she was badly injured and horribly scarred in a explosion that killed her mother when she was little and her Mad Scientist father remade her body with cybernetics and fused it with Pharaoh 90's power. This is the reason why she wears long sleeves in order to hide her cybernetic body.
Card Games
While not actually involving cybernetics, the necromantic Golgari guild of Magic's Ravnica setting is apparently quite casual about reanimating and 'improving' their dead with plant life, as illustrated on cards like Vigor Mortis.
In Yu-Gi-Oh!, Gagagigo was rebuilt as the cybernetic Giga Gagagigo in order to fight the Invader of Darkness; however, the transformation corrupted him, eventually leading him to become a mindless half-mechanical monstrosity. Another example would be Inpachi, a tree golem which was burned into charcoal and resurrected as the cybernetic Woodborg Inpachi.
Doom Patrol member Robotman. In his case, everything but the brain is robotic.
Averted by USAgent of the Marvel Universe. He lost an arm and a leg to Nuke, a cybernetically-augmented super soldier, but refuses to get cybernetic replacements, as he doesn't want to look down at his own body and be reminded of Nuke every day. Not that he really needs 'em.
In All Fall Down, Pronto goes through this, becoming the brainwashed and crazy Modern Prometheus, who nearly kills Siphon.
Several characters in Marvel Star Wars. In the very first non-film comic a town proves unwilling to let a man be buried in the graveyard set aside for offworlders because he was a cyborg, so you know there's a lot of Fantastic Racism. A stormtrooper named Valance who was badly injured and had to be made into a cyborg became a bounty hunter who mostly expressed hatred towards droids.
Then there's Shira Brie/Lumiya. Originally Luke's wingmate and love interest, he shot her down without knowing who she was while on a mission and later found that she was actually an assassin/agent sent by his father. At the end of that arc she was seen floating in a bacta tank, observed by Vader. Later she resurfaced with three prosthetic limbs and extensive scarring as Lumiya, Dark Lady of the Sith.
Chew has this for two characters so far. The first one it happens to is Colby who takes a butcher's knife to the face in issue #1 while Poyo undergoes this later on.
In Legacy, Cade refuses to let Azlyn Rae die and has her put in a Vader-like life support armor. She is initially very unhappy with this, both because she was at peace and because the armor came with a Vader-like mask too. Fortunately, she was able to trade up for a more elegant suit of armor sans breath mask.
Narrator: It took them six months to put him back together. Synthetic flesh, bioengineered organs. It always scared him that they might take out his soul... and replace it with some matrix chip.
Wang the Perverted came back as Evil Presence in Flesh Gordon Meets the Cosmic Cheerleaders. Since the same actor portrayed both characters, with no attempt to hide his voice, it's obvious to everyone who watches.
The most well known example in the whole wide galaxy would be...Darth Vader!
Before we knew about him, we saw Luke lose his hand and get a new prosthetic. Like his father before him, he tended to wear a glove on that hand, even though with synthflesh Luke's hand looked entirely organic. He sometimes wears it, sometimes doesn't in the Star Wars Expanded Universe - it's a sign of what's In the Blood.
If you're going just by the original trilogy, Luke only puts on a glove partway through Return of the Jedi when his prosthetic hand is damaged. In the DVD version, you can see the little wires exposed as he examines it before he covers it with the glove.
And for another Star Wars example, General Grievous, who is arguably even more heavily reconstructed than Vader, with only the brain, the heart, the lungs and the eyes remaining organic.
The Sith Stalkers from the Star Wars Expanded Universe are more or less a mass produced version of Darth Vader. Galen Marek from the video game The Force Unleashed ends up as one in the "evil" alternate ending.
The title character in RoboCop. Ditto for the villain Cain in RoboCop 2 who lost his whole body. Especially monstrous as OCP killed Cain explicitly so they could rebuild him. Another interesting side note is that several other attempted RoboCops committed suicide; the implication is that people need a level of motivation found mostly in psychotics to be able to tolerate a cyborg's existence. It's also implied that Body Horror played a significant part in those suicides. Those failed batches were much less human in appearance than the RoboCop model Murphy was converted into.
When Jason is killed in Jason X, there's not enough left of him for the futuristic medical beds to reconstruct as he was, so he is instead reconstructed as a cyborg (much to the heroes' chagrin).
Literature
An interesting example is from Terry Pratchett's Feet of Clay, where the Golem Dorfl is destroyed in the final battle against the golem Mesugah. Afterwards, Captain Carrot actually says, in a direct reference to The Six Million Dollar Man, the line: "We can rebuild him. We have the pottery." And they do.
Subverted, the character wasn't alive to begin with, or at least had no biological components.
Peter David's Psi-Man series had Beutel return with fewer and fewer organic parts each time, after getting trashed in the previous appearance's No One Could Survive That moment. We think the finale got him for real...
The hero in one Arthur C. Clarke's short story is a man who was, delicately speaking, badly hurt in a blimp crash, and was more reconstructed (with cybernetics) than healed. The doctors were nice enough to make him 20 centimeters taller to make up for being half-machine.
Played for laughs by Edgar Allan Poe in The Man Who Was Used Up.
The Tin Man from the Oz books may be the Ur Example.
Death Star has a surgeon looking at Darth Vader from a safe distance and thinking that it's pretty obvious that the Dark Lord is largely cybernetic. But it seems that this book is a little divorced from the rest of the EU, since the surgeon seems to think that cybernetics are rare and most people opt to have the missing tissue cloned and grafted on.
Supplementary material for Dark Forces reveals that the prototypes for darktroopers - robotic stormtroopers - were aging veteran clone troopers, too old to fight well but very experienced, who had seventy percent or more of their bodies replaced. No one asked them about this beforehand, so while they were effective in the battlefield, a lot of them committed suicide.
In Dark Empire, the cloned Palpatine uses Shadow Droids, which are similar except that they're fighters piloted by the brains of incapacitated TIE pilots. And they can use the Force. Sorta.
Ton Phanan of Wraith Squadron has an allergy to bacta, so any debilitating injuries have to be replaced with cybernetics.
In Freedom (the sequel to Daemon), Loki receives this treatment after being disfigured during torture.
In the Quantum Gravity series, Lila Black comes back from Alfheim after a torture session and goes through this in order to survive. In a twist emphasizing the Grey and Gray Morality, she didn't need those to survive until the people in her organization got their hands on her...
In Prelude to Dune, Prince Rhombur Vernius of Ix is seriously injured during an assassination attempt on his friend Duke Leto Atreides, losing his entire lower half and much of the upper half. Dr. Wellington Yueh, who has just managed to perfect cybernetic prosthetics on Richese, agrees to "fix" Rhombur with the prosthetics. After the procedure, he is mostly cybernetic than human. Since Rhombur is Ixian, machines are a big part of his life, so being a cyborg for him is not so bad. However, he loses the ability to reproduce and, being the last surviving member of House Vernius, knows his line is ending. His wife suggests impregnating herself with the semen of Rhombur's deceased half-brother on his mother's side, thus providing him with a distaff heir. With his new cybernetic body, Rhombur is very strong and can crush a man's neck with one hand. He does, however, spend years learning how to properly use his new parts.
People in Honor Harrington generally prefer a regen therapy, but there's a sizable minority for whom it doesn't work, including the main character. These unfortunates have to do with prosthetics, up to and including becoming a Hollywood Cyborg depending on the extent of damage. Honor, for example, has an artificial eye and an artificial arm (with a built-in gun, no less).
Live Action TV
The Trope Namer is The Six Million Dollar Man, where Steve Austin is rebuilt and given cybernetic implants to become the eponymous hero after a crash.
The Bionic Woman, being a spin-off of The Six Million Dollar Man, follows on with the same concept. As does the 2007 remake, Bionic Woman.
Subverted in Next Generation with Jean-Luc Picard, who was stabbed through the heart as a Starfleet cadet and received an artificial one as a replacement. While this event helped to make him a formidable officer, his newfound strengths came from the psychological impact of his close brush with death, not from his cardiac implant.
In Kamen Rider, most of the 90s-and-before Riders were physically altered in some way to become Riders, though few in response to otherwise-unrecoverable injury or illness. Kamen Rider J was one of those cases, infused with "J Power" after being tossed off a cliff by bad guys. (This is a rare case of the transformation being benign: the rebuilding is usually done by bad guys wanting to use the Riders as a trump card. For some reason, upgrading always comes before brainwashing, and the Rider-to-be always escapes brainwashing. (When will Shocker learn?)
Spoofed in That '70s Show. In one of Fez's many Imagine Spots, he contemplates what it will be like to have Hyde, Eric, and Kelso teach him how to get girls..
Hyde: Gentlemen...we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him smarter, handsomer, aloofer.
Eric: Aloofer? Is that even a word?
Hyde: We can make it a word. We have the technology.
Tabletop Games
Dreadnoughts in Warhammer40000 are much the same - veteran Space Marines who have been mortally injured in battle, now kept in their heavily-armored chassis. Fortunately, since the darkness of the far future has only war, there's never a shortage of... materials. Also, since they are fanatic warrior monks, they have (slightly) less mental problems than most other people. Most are also kept sedated between battle so they don't spend too much time reflecting on their condition, a wise move when you see what happens to their Chaos counterparts, who aren't.
Dreadnoughts are arguably a slightly different trope, depending on precisely how thoroughly plumbed-in the pilot happens to be. Augmetics, on the other hand, play this one totally straight. Pretty much all the species of 40K have various versions of this trope, the only exceptions being the Organic Technology-using Tyranids and the Necrons, who bypassed the "cyborg" phase altogether in favour of Brain Uploading. note Which mostly backfired horribly, leaving only a few necrons still sane enough to lead. But this being Warhammer 40,000 you probably already knew that.
Particularly noteworthy are the Iron Hands chapter of Space Marines. Their particular hat is a belief that the machine is strong, the flesh is weak. Ergo, Iron Hands Space Marines actually look forward to serious injuries that necessitate the rebuilding of limbs and the replacement of organs with bionic perfection. Notably, their Techmarines and Chaplains are one and the same, "Iron Fathers", while those interred within Dreadnoughts are revered even more highly that those of other Chapters.
Most sci-fi games feature Transhuman cybertech of some stripe, but there's usually some limiting factor as to the degree to which one can be rebuilt. However, Shadowrun goes whole hog with cyberzombies. Apparently, Aztechnology can completely rebuild a person... but he'll live a miserable shell of an existence and likely be dead within a year.
Many fantasy games (particularly D&D) have necromancy provide the same effect, with villains and heroes coming back faster, stronger and deader, only the answer to the humanity question is a rather obvious No.
A more traditional example might be the Half-Golem template, which has people repaired with magically powered mechanical parts. Eventually they go nuts because Cybernetics Eat Your Soul.
Toys
This also turned out to be a popular method of justifying new versions of Transformers characters to sell more toys. Since they're already robots to begin with, it usually works out fine.
In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, bio-mechanical augmentation is a state of the art but highly controversial science. The guy being rebuilt in the image is protagonist Adam Jensen, chief of security at one of the leading augmentation corporations, who was severely injured in a brutal and highly coordinated attack on the company's headquarters; Adam's employer augments him in order to save his life. It turns out later on that Adam was genetically engineered to be able to accept augments without needing constant dozes of the drug Neuropozyne to prevent implant rejection, and his employer took advantage of this to stuff him with every piece of advanced military hardware they had to make him into a killing machine*
At first it's implied that he was almost fully augmented due to the rather extreme damage to his body, but an easily missed email at the local LIMB clinic indicates that only Adam's chest and left arm were damaged beyond repair: a neat little clause in his employment contract resulted in Sarif having the legal authority to remove his two perfectly functioning legs and other arms to replace them with augmentations, and cut open his skull for more good times. Funny thing is, the email fails to mention the large caliber bullet Adam took in his left temple, so its veracity is questionable.
On a larger scale, people in the Human Revolution universe are evenly divided between pro and anti augmentation stances, but anyone can choose to get an augmentation. The only limiting factors are money, and the subsequent lifetime use of Neuropozyne to prevent implant rejection syndrome (a build-up of scar tissue that impairs both biologic and mechanical operation). Essentially, with enough cash, anyone can invoke We Can Rebuild Him.
Gruntilda in Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge, although instead of being revived as a cyborg, she transfers her soul to a robotic body while she is trapped below a rock.
The Starwolf team in Star Fox 64, if you enter Venom the hard way from Area-6, though Wolf avoided this fate.
Oddly enough, while the hard ending is canon, Star Wolf returns pretty much unaffected in Assault, although Wolf traded his eyepatch for something more high-tech. It's also perfectly possible to avoid the first encounter with Star Wolf and they still show up like this on Venom.
This might be the case for Yoshimitsu from Soul Calibur.
Big Boss in Snakes Revenge. But we don't talk about that.
He's a cyborg in official Metal Gear 2 Solid Snake as well, although this fact only comes up at the end (and is explained as being the end result of having been tortured and mutilated prior to becoming your CO in the first game).
Arguably, Samus herself. In Prime, her power suit gets rebuilt to make use of the game's Applied Phlebotinum. In Fusion, she even gets injected with a Metroid vaccine that alters her body.
Her suit had become integrated with her conscious system, making it impossible to remove while she was unconscious without surgery. Samus manages to pull this trope off twice in less than three minutes in Fusion.
General Weavil and Mother Brain, too. The Space Pirates are good at this.
Although it is noted that her armour drops when she uses the whole suit's power for the special attack is super smash brothers brawl, revealing a more agile and armourless samus.
This actually happens to the Player Character in Armored Core 1 and 2. A little known secret is that if you keep dying, the game "lowers the difficulty" by giving you cyborg upgrades that improve your Humongous Mecha. It even has a funny/morbid little cutscene with the evil AI and a doctor discussing it.
In the Time Crisis series, Wild Dog gets shot to pieces at the end of every game. The first time he returned as a cyborg it was a surprise twist (for a given value of "surprising"), now it's just what he does.
Hugo Medio from Super Robot Wars MX has this in his backstory, where an attack by a powerful enemy (the Jetzt in OG Gaiden, or the Devil Gundam in MX, the latter uses the zombified version of his old friend Foglia) left him very gravely wounded, and the only way to save him was to add cybernetic parts to his body.
World of Warcraft has a magic example for Kael'Thas. After his first defeat, he was brought back to life by a demon, apparently by shoving a crystal through his chest.
According to the backstory, this is the source of all the Protoss Dragoons in StarCraft. Most notable is Fenix, who you get to control both before and after gets almost killed.
Then there are the Immortals of Star Craft II, Dragoons on steroids. Due to desperation and the loss of the old Dragoon shrines on Aiur, the Protoss had to refit the ones they had with hardened energy shields to squeeze every iota of use out of them. They represent a dying breed who will give everything to buy even a second more for their people. The definition of Bad AssDeterminators.
Averted but later subverted in the Mega Man X series. When Zero dies at the end of the first game, the Maverick Hunters try their best in rebuilding him, but Zero's designs are too complicated to duplicate. In the second game, however, he was indeed rebuilt, but by the villains. This situation, however, only happens in the non-canon ending; the true ending has X obtain Zero's parts (which are implied to be created by the villains nonetheless), and the Hunters use them to truly revive Zero.
This sort of subversion happens again later, in Mega Man X6, where Zero reappears once again Back from the Dead, but there's absolutely no idea as to who actually rebuilt him this time.
And rebuilt one last time into an even more powerful body by Ciel.
Marathon brings up this trope with its Mark IV Mjolnir combat cyborgs. There is even a strong implication that your character himself is a robocopped dead soldier.
In Xenosaga, "Ziggy" is a Ziggurat-8 model cyborg, thus rebuilt after the suicide of policeman Jan Sauer. He isn't too happy about it, until he finds a new purpose.
In Mass Effect 2, to avoid the Gameplay Guided Amnesia, the game starts with the Normandy getting shot to pieces and Commander Shepard being hurled into space in a leaking space suit and falling all the way to the surface of the nearby planet. Cerberus retrieved the charred and broken remains and spend two years and billions of credits to bring Shepards body back to life, including most of the memories. Cue Shepard's reply to bewildered onlookers, "I Got Better."
Urgot from League of Legends, a battle-scarred warrior who "refused to die". When he finally died, he was rebuilt as a cybernetic crab creature with a grenade launcher arm.
Also, Orianna, although instead of rebuilding the actual girl her "father" recreated her as a clockwork automaton.
In the Vera Blanc games by indie developer Winter Wolves, the eponymous teenage heroine was saved from a fatal brain tumor with an experimental procedure that not only re-wired her brain to work more efficiently, but gives her the ability to read minds.
Amber from Project Eden was turned into a combat Cyborg after a skyway accident, apparently at her request.
Peacock from Skullgirls. She was originally a normal girl who was kidnapped by slavers that mutilated her body*
. She was found after her torture by staff from the shadowy Anti-Skullgirl Lab, who equipped her with a shiny new set of cyborg parts: mechanical arms with three eyes on each, a bear trap for teeth, and a veritable cornucopia of reality-warping instruments of destruction. Unfortunately, the torture drove her mad, and being rebuilt failed to stabilize her mind.
Ben Birdland was a cop who ran afoul of his crooked unit, ending up in an iron lung as a result. He accepted the Anti-Skullgirl Lab's offer to rebuild him as Big Band, and they made good by integrating a breathing apparatus and an array of pneumatic musical weapons into his body.
The hero in Shatterhand loses his hands against the bad guys, and his new fits allow him to take them on.
This is the explanation for Megatron's new body in Transformers Fall Of Cybertron; he starts the game in the same body as in War for Cybertron, then gets pulverized by Metroplex and rebuilt by Soundwave into a similar but different body.
In the prologue to Too Human, a Cyber Punk adaptation of Norse Mythology, Baldr is resurrected by Aesir cybernetics technology. It's implied to happen again and again and again every time the player dies and the cutscene where a Valkyrie teleports in to carry him off to Valhalla shows. There are also plot-relevant cutscenes where your support troops who die are carried off as well and in the last area they are joined by the setting's version of Einherjar, nine-foot-tall armored cyborgs with Arm Cannons
Implied of Liberty Prime in Fallout 3, who gets Kill Satted and blown to smithereens during the first quest of Broken Steel; his remains are returned to the Citadel, where you can donate spare parts for cash, although he never actually gets rebuilt in the game. A more traditional example is Star Paladin Cross, who was rebuilt into a cyborg by Scribe Rothchild following critical injuries while defending Elder Lyons.
Webcomics
In The Order of the StickStart of Darkness Prequel, Xykon's transformation from forcibly de-powered old man to Lich Sorcerer was shown in this fashion, 'Xykon. sorcerer. A man barely alive. Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the magic. We have the magic to make the world's next undead sorcerer lich. Xykon will be that lich. Deader than he was before. Deader, faster, stronger.' and so on.
The bunny from Homestuck was quite injured by around twenty-five years of service, until it was patched-up by Rose. And thirteen additional years later rebuild by Jade...as a cyborg!
Later, Andrew Hussie does this for Spades Slick after saving him from his dying universe.
Dresden Codak: During Hob, happens offscreen to Kimiko, then she gets ripped apart, and rebuilt again. She's had her Artificial Limbs ever since, despite the comic's ambiguous continuity.
Psychotic assassin Deathlist of the Whateley Universe. He's been rebuilt so many times the only human part of him is his head. Supposedly, his first rebuild was after his parents stuffed him into a trash compactor, decades ago.
Red vs. Blue plays With this trope a bit. In this case, the person turned into a cyborg (Simmons) isn't actually the one who needed rebuilding; instead, he's rebuilt as a cyborg so his body parts can be used to save Grif after an unfortunate incident with a Warthog and the wall of a base. Why Grif wasn't the one to be made a cyborg is a testament to Sarge's determination to never let common sense get in the way of scientific progress.
Though technically, he was already planning to make Simmons a cyborg (so he could fix the warthog), it just happened that it left a bunch of spare organs lying around.
Arguable, as he intentionally upgraded himself with cyber-parts. Cyborg, however, in both comics and cartoons, fits this trope to a "T" (ouch, sorry)
Baxter Stockman in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003) lost more and more body parts as the show went on, becoming a more monstrous cyborg with each appearance, until he eventually ends up as a Brain in a Jar.
Hexadecimal from ReBoot had this treatment after being blown up when a game cube (No, not THAT one) cut the giant laser she was using in half, but instead of a cyborg she was turned into a BDSM slave. Byherbrother.
Well, technically, it was Herr Doctor that made her like that.
In Men In Black the TV series, Alpha first rebuilt himself with alien body parts, but later used cybernetics.
In Bionic Six, Bionic One was able to keep his identity as a cyborg superhero secret from his family until an accident required him to "use the technology," if you will, to prevent them from dying.
The Venture Brothers parodies this with Steve Austin, the original bionic man, running away from the U.S. since it turns out the government wants him to pay for the multi-million dollar surgery, on a government agent's salary.
In the second season finale of Archer, the KGB turns Barry into a bionic man to hunt down Archer and Katya. His introduction is a straight-up homage to the oft-quoted The Six Million Dollar Man opening.
In the Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode "Total Re-Carl", Meatwad declares they can rebuild him after Frylock's Super-Toilet prototype destroyed Carl's body (leaving him a severed head). After several mishaps, Frylock just shoves Carl's head onto a remote-control toy truck and calls it a day.
Some intraocular lens implants used in cataract surgery are reported to give better vision than natural vision at its youth peak.
There is a debate over whether prosthetic legs such as those used by sprinter Oscar Pistorius give users an unfair competitive advantage over "able-bodied" (rather makes a mockery of that term...) athletes.
. It's inevitable. No guarantees, however, don't come crying about your jetpack.
