Unexplained Recovery / Live-Action TV

Reign: I thought you were dead.
Kara Zor-El: I got better.

— Supergirl (2015)

Unexplained Recoveries in live-action TV.

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• In season 5 of 24, Tony Almeida dies in Jack Bauer's arms. In season 7, he's alive and well and has pulled a Face–Heel Turn, and Jack is genuinely surprised to learn this. It's implied that his death, which at the time appeared to be a genuine attempt to kill him by a captured terrorist with ties to President Evil, was in fact staged in the same manner that Jack's was in season 4. And if you thought Jack Bauer would kill him... and this time, he'd stay dead! Think again. He's a Mole! Wait a minute... Now Tony's bad again.
• In practically every episode of The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. in which he appeared, Pete Hutter would get killed at some point. Yet he would always show up again no worse for wear. The explanations he gave for his survival got increasingly ridiculous as the series went on.
• In the pilot of Andromeda Trance was shot, only to revive shortly after with no explanation. In a later episode she actually said "I Got Better".
• Arrow
  • While it's not the first (or last) time that Oliver Queen came back from the dead, his mid-season demise in Season 3 where Ra's al Ghul — leader of the League of Assassins, with centuries of experience in killing — stabs Oliver and then throws him off a mountaintop is simply handwaved as being due to Heroic Willpower and being nursed back to health by Tatsu. This is despite the fact that there's a Lazarus Pit In-Universe that could have been used for this instead.
  • After being fatally stabbed by Oliver in the Season One climax, Malcolm Merlyn returns in Season 2 and is deliberately vague as to how. While the existence of the Lazarus Pit is eventually revealed, this was under the control of Ra's al Ghul at the time, who was Malcolm's enemy. In a later season we finally discover there are other Lazarus Pits in secret locations known to Malcolm's followers.
• Buffyverse:
  • At the end of Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 2, Buffy is forced to kill Angel to save the world, resulting in him being Dragged Off to Hell by the demon Acathla. Three episodes into season 3, Angel is freed from said Hell, and it's never officially revealed how he came back; even years later, by the time of Angel season 5, Angel himself has no clue. While the First Evil claims to be the one who broke him out, considering its personality, it may very well have been lying.
  • In the Grand Finale of Buffy, Spike pulls off a Heroic Sacrifice to close the Hellmouth in Sunnydale. He comes back in Angel season 5, which is lampshaded.
    Spike: Flash-fried in a pillar of fire, saving the world. I got better.
• Babylon 5 subverts this, with an entire episode devoted to what Sheridan experienced after his trip to Z'ha'dum, before his miraculous (in-universe, at least) appearance back on the station.
  Drazi ambassador: ...We thought you were dead.
  Sheridan: I was. I'm better now.
• On The Bold and the Beautiful, Dr. Taylor Hayes died in her husband's arms after being shot, but three years later was revealed to be alive, having been spirited away from the hospital by a wealthy prince who fell in love with her the first time she was presumed dead.
• El Chavo del ocho: One episode ended with Don Ramón being Squashed Flat by an angry Mr. Barriga, while in another El Chavo popped Ñoño like a balloon with a pair of scissors, leaving only his clothes behind. Naturally, by the next episodes they were just fine.
• In Chou Sei Shin Gransazer, Proud Warrior Race Guy Impactor Logia blows himself up as he couldn't bear the loss against his rival. In a later episode, he returns inexplicably. The only explanation the narrator gives is that Logia's desire for revenge kept him alive, despite being blown to bits.
• On Days of Our Lives, Mad Scientist Dr. Wilhelm Rolf was accidentally killed in 2003 when a crate fell on his head. Rex and Mimi, who were partially responsible for the accident, sneaked the body into a morgue to avoid responsibility. The body was then stolen from the morgue and used by Larry Welch to fake his death; the body was set on fire and then misidentified as Welch. When Rolf reappeared in 2007, another character reacted with surprise as Rolf was thought to be dead. Rolf's only response was "Didn't take."
• Doctor Who:
  • The Daleks are kings of this one. In the classic serials, most stories would end with them dying in droves, with their first ever ending with all of them dying. "The Evil of the Daleks" even had the Second Doctor proclaim it was their "final end". Naturally, they soon show up again fresh as daisies.
  • One of Master's/Missy's specialties, going hand-in-hand with their Joker Immunity:
    • In "Time-Flight", the last time we saw the Master he was trapped in a mathematically-constructed city as it collapsed in on itself. The full "explanation" for this is as follows:
      The Doctor: So you escaped from Castrovalva. I should have guessed.
      The Master: As gullible as ever, my dear Doctor.
    • "The Mark of the Rani": The Rani discusses the fact that the last time we saw the Master, he was being burned to death in a volcano.
      The Master: You jest of course. I'm indestructible, the whole universe knows that!"
      The Rani: Is that so?
    • The Missy was disintegrated utterly in "Death in Heaven". This example is ultimately an aversion, as unusually for the character, we actually get an explanation as to how she survived this time. In "The Magician's Apprentice", it's revealed that she actually used the disintegrator weapon to power a concealed teleport device.
      Missy: Death is for other people.
    • In "The Doctor Falls", Missy is shot In the Back (by her own past self) with a laser screwdriver at a strength that he claims is enough to prevent her from regenerating, minutes before a massive explosion destroys the deck of the spaceship she is on. Inevitably, he turns up in a new regeneration in "Spyfall".
  • The Doctor saves Gallifrey from the Time War by shunting the entire planet into a pocket dimension, but he still has to get them back somehow, to the point that they even give him a full new set of regenerations since they need him. Eventually, they reappear, having pulled themselves out. How? We have no idea; the Doctor refuses to ask. "It would have made them feel clever."
  • "Orphan 55": After going back to cover the Doctor's escape from the Dreg nest, Kane is last seen fighting Dregs whose attention she's deliberately drawn to herself with her exit cut off. She abruptly reappears near the end to rescue Bella with no explanation.
• All the characters from the little-known Australian show Double the Fist. Characters literally explode and appear fine in the next scene.
• Played for Laughs in Father Ted with Father Larry Duff. He always suffers from kind of misfortune every time the titular father rings him on his mobile, often appearing fatal. He then appears again completely fine ready for another death.
• The final few episodes of Felicity had the title character going back in time after the death of Elena. In the series finale she returns to the present, where Elena is inexplicably alive and no one finds this odd. A deleted scene explained that she'd changed the past, but this still doesn't make sense as she made all kinds of other changes (like the death of Noel) that didn't stick.
• In the very first episode of Forever Knight, Nick Knight's confrontation with his vampire sire, Lucien LaCroix, ends with LaCroix impaled through the heart, immolated and reduced to a pile of ashes. LaCroix maintains an onscreen presence throughout the first season via flashbacks spanning Nick's 800-year past, then returns in the present to menace Nick in the first episode of season two. How did this happen? Well...
  LaCroix: You didn't actually believe you'd killed me, did you? I'm much too old and powerful for that.
• Friends: Lampshaded when Joey is nominated for a Soapie award:
  Rachel: I mean, you're up against the guy who survived his own cremation.
• In the eighth episode of the sixth season in Game of Thrones, the young assassin, Arya Stark, has a seemingly miraculous recovery from a stab wound to the gut she endured at the conclusion of the episode prior. She is shown suffering from her wound, but her total and rapid recovery is unexplained, save for a kindly actress who patched her up, fed her some soup and gave her some milk of the poppy.
• In the season three finale of Haven, Nathan is shot several times by Jordan, causing him to send Duke into the barn after Audrey rather than follow her himself. Season four begins six months later, and no mention is made of Nathan ever being shot. Although there is some Fridge Brilliance there in that most outward signs of recovering from an injury are rooted in pain, which Nathan doesn't feel due to his Trouble. He does, however, lack any scarring that one would expect given how often he gets impaled,burned, and shot throughout the series.
• Heroes:
  • Even before Sylar got the healing power, he was pronounced dead when he was in Company custody, then just sorta randomly came back to life. He was once reduced to a charred skeleton after his intended death, then just came back next season. Fanon has come up with numerous explanations, but the show itself didn't really bother.
  • Adam should have died when White Beard's camp blew up, since the regenerators can't survive trauma that kills the brain, and Adam, brain included, was blown to smithereens.
  • It was lampshaded in the season one finale.
    Sylar: Didn't I kill you?
    Peter: Didn't take.
• Kamen Rider has remarkably few examples for how cheap death is:
  • Kamen Rider Drive marks its halfway point with the defeat and apparent death of rival Chase, whose core is shown to explode on camera in front of most of the main characters. The stinger for the episode shows that Chase somehow survived, for which no explanation is ever offered. This becomes especially jarring when Chase is Killed Off for Real.
  • Kamen Rider Ghost dies and revives four times during the show and associated films. Once sets up the premise when he comes back as a ghost with 99 days to live, once extends his time limit when his father sacrifices himself, once has him survive the destruction of his Soul Jar by evolving from a ghost into a god, and the last offers no explanation at all.
• Kamen Rider Revice: Midway through the season, George creates a Crow Vistamp with the intent of giving it to either Daiji or Kagerou, with the stamp being designed to kill the other personality. Kagerou decides to settle his differences with Daiji in a Duel to the Death, which Daiji comes out on top of, killing Kagerou’s new physical body and eradicating what’s left of his personality by converting the Crow Vistamp into the Holy Wing Vistamp. Only for Kagerou to pop up a dozen and a half episodes later, with the only explanation given being that “he was still alive”.
• Knight Rider: In KARR's second appearance, KITT and Michael incredulously point out that the last time they faced each other, KARR fell off a cliff and they saw him explode on impact with the ground.
• Lampshaded and played straight in the French Canadian show Le cœur a ses raisons. When Brett is buried alive and manages to escape, the details of his evasion aren't shown. Brett later breaks the fourth wall and says, "If my life was a TV show, the details of my miraculous escape would be included in the season's DVD." (which it wasn't). Later, when characters tell him they thought he was dead, he simply answers "I'm better, thanks."
• The Obituary Montage at the end of one episode of Look Around You casually says, "Viewers may be pleased to know that Clive Pounds, who died during filming of this program, has since come back to life."
• Mikhail on Lost walks though a sonic barrier and suffers a complete mental breakdown, complete with blood spurting from every orifice. He goes on to make a total recovery: "Fortunately the fences were not set to lethal levels." After that, he was beaten unconscious without suffering any damage, and got harpooned in the chest — and survived. He was finally killed by diving underwater and holding a live grenade to his face.
• Murdoc from MacGyver was repeatedly "killed" only to return later, perfectly healthy and with no explanation as to how he survived.
• M*A*S*H:
  • "A Full Rich Day", a third-season episode which aired in 1974 included a subplot of Hawkeye apparently misplacing the body of a deceased lieutenant from Luxembourg. At the end of the episode the camp holds the funeral for the absent soldier, who staggers out of post-op saluting as the Luxembourg national anthem is played, resulting in the following exchange:
    Hawkeye: [to Trapper] I thought you said he was dead!
    Trapper: [shrugs] He got better.
  • In "Trick Or Treatment", an aid station has to put a dead soldier in the ambulance with the live casualties because they're in the middle of evacuating and there's no other way to get the body out. Only when Father Mulcahy goes to give the Last Rites, he discovers that the man is still alive.
• Sir Leon in Merlin. Known amongst fans for being "immortal". Got fried by a dragon at the end of one series, was completely fine at the beginning of the next. Later seemed to have died during an attack on his patrol but survived certain death by drinking from a magical cup given to him by the druids and returned to Camelot more or less unharmed. And now, contrary to all reasonable expectations, he has actually survived the whole series. Something Arthur didn't manage to do. He's even in one of the last shots.
• There have been many instances where Muppet characters have gotten eaten, only to be shown alive and well later (sometimes in the same production, sometimes not). Of course there have also been instances where characters got eaten but were still alive while inside the monsters who ate them.
• Played for Laughs in Mystery Science Theater 3000. At the end of season 11, Jonah is gobbled up by Mecha-Reptilicus and his fate is left uncertain. When season 12 starts up, he's back on the Satellite of Love, ready to explain his harrowing tale of survival... but the Bots really don't care. He tries to tell Kinga about this, but she demands it to be dropped as they aren't doing those plot points anymore.
• NCIS:
  • Ziva was explaining to Gibbs about a rogue Mossad agent who faked his own death, when Gibbs asked how he still manages to be alive, she comes back with, "Apparently, he got better."
  • The EXACT same exchange happened again in the eighth season opener with Mike Franks and Gibbs.
• Night Court uses this trope as a Running Gag with Judge Harry Stone's dad, played by John Astin, who had been in a mental institution. When he does or says something 'crazy' (like talking about meeting Santa Claus to go around the world on Christmas Eve), he always finishes with a big smile and says, "But I'm feeling much better now".
• Once Upon a Time:
  • Prince Phillip shows up without a specific explanation as to why he's back, after having his soul sucked out by a wraith.
  • Sir Lancelot, previously thought dead, shows up. His excuse? "It's a long story".
• Played with unintentionally in Oz. After having been killed, Peter Schibetta appears in the background in a later episode. However, he was canonically dead; the scene in question was filmed for an earlier episode.
• Power Rangers:
  • Darkonda from Power Rangers in Space has nine lives like a cat; no explanation for this is given, but it means every time he's seemingly destroyed, he comes back again (useful for when your Sentai counterpart gets destroyed in giant form but you've still got footage of him to use). But since he has Chronic Backstabbing Disorder, these destructions often are at the hands of fellow villains. He ultimately dwindles down to one life and attempts to take out Dark Specter with planet-busting missiles; he succeeds, but Dark Specter swallows him whole right as his body explodes.
  • In the finale of Power Rangers Lost Galaxy, no explanation was given for how Kendrix was restored to life. (Admittedly, no-one had ever directly stated she had been killed, although it was pretty obvious; the actress portraying her had to leave after being diagnosed with leukemia, and the writers felt that they were safe with such an option, given the almost universal positive response to Zordon's Heroic Sacrifice in the previous series.) There was a lot of speculation among fans, like that the Saber had something to do with it, but nothing definite.
  • Vypra was last seen in Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue when Queen Bansheera absorbed and consumed her as punishment for failure. She reappeared later in Power Rangers Time Force, crawling out of a nondescript grave, but no explanation was given as to how she got there or how she managed to restore herself. (Whether this meant she was alive or undead, she didn't say).
  • In the finale of Power Rangers Super Megaforce, when all of the previous Power Ranger teams arrived to help the Megaforce Rangers defeat the massive approaching army of X-Borgs and Bruisers, Robo Knight was seen standing between Antonio (from Power Rangers Samurai) and Kira (from Power Rangers: Dino Thunder), after he had seemingly been destroyed by Vrak near the end of "Vrak Is Back", in his Heroic Sacrifice to save Orion. Later, Troy encountered him and said, "Hello, old friend!", and Robo Knight responded, "Glad to be back!". It's possible that Gosei and Tensou were somehow able to revive him themselves, or that Xander (from Power Rangers Mystic Force) told the other Rangers (Tori from Power Rangers Ninja Storm, Bridge from Power Rangers S.P.D., Adam from Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, and Kira) who had fought with him against Rita Repulsa's and Lord Zedd's son Thrax in "Once A Ranger" from Power Rangers Operation Overdrive (as stand-ins; during this two-part episode, Thrax had temporarily drained the traditional team of that season of their powers) about Jenji, the genie, and one of them wished for Robo Knight to be revived (since Jenji told the Mystic Force Rangers that he could grant "anything their hearts desired"). Another possibility is that the Sentinel Knight, also from Power Rangers Operation Overdrive, revived Robo Knight using the Corona Aurora (he may have also restored all of the previous Ranger teams' powers in time for the finale).
• Supershock rips out Deena's heart out in the Powers season 2 finale. This merely lands her in a hospital.
  Supershock: What did I... I'm sorry. You're gonna be all right. I'm gonna put it back in.
• Ripping Yarns, "The Curse of the Claw": Kevin is sailing to Burma to return the cursed claw to its rightful owners. Mr Russell^note who is a woman but still goes by Mr Russell wants to keep sailing so she grabs the claw and attempts to throw it into the ocean. The ship blows up in a huge explosion. Turns out that Kevin is the only survivor. How he survived or how he got back to England is not explained.
• In BBC's Sherlock as homage to the books, Sherlock somehow survives his "death" from falling off the roof of St Bartholomew's Hospital. The next season has several characters state theories on how he survived, but how he actually survives is never explained.
• Saturday Night Live:
  • In one "Space: The Infinite Frontier" sketch, Harry Caray (Will Ferrell)'s guest asks him, "Didn't you die?" (The real Harry Caray had indeed died earlier that year.) His response is just, "Yes I did. What's your point?" She's so baffled that she drops the issue immediately.
  • One of the Bill Brasky sketches is set at Brasky's funeral. He gets up again at the end and seems back to normal, despite one of the other characters mentioning that he'd been autopsied.
• Mel Tormé guest stars as himself in Sliders (his son Tracy was one of the show's creators) and is apparently killed by a car bomb after Rembrandt inadvertently reveals to the Mob that he's working against them — he refers to them "working together", unaware that the Rembrandt of this universe is the head of the FBI. He reappears at the end of the episode and offers only a cryptic explanation, the gist being that he's too smart to be killed in such a way.
• Southland: Downplayed with John Cooper's bad back. At the end of the first season the fact that he's got a serious, career-limiting injury that he's been covering up with increasing amounts of questionably sourced prescription painkillers has finally come to a head and his partner has finally threatened to turn him in if he doesn't get some help, and the last episode ends on a somewhat bittersweet note as Cooper walks into a clinic to speak to a doctor about his back injury and his substance abuse problem. Come the second season, and the first time we see Cooper he's lifting weights in a gym without any sign he's in pain, and the only indication that this isn't a complete Retcon is a surgical scar on his lower back. The plotline isn't completely forgotten (there's a moment where he nearly has a full-on panic attack because he thinks he might have aggravated the injury again, and it turns out his painkiller addiction was a lot less well-hidden than he thought) but it still feels like something of a cop-out: If an operation and an unspecified but presumably not long period of physical therapy were enough to have Coop cleared to return to active duty then those months he spent drugging himself to the gills and putting on a brave face to avoid medical retirement were All for Nothing, which doesn't even get acknowledged.
• Star Trek:
  • Mister Leslie, an extremely minor recurring Red Shirt on Star Trek: The Original Series, was famously sucked dry by a vampire cloud in "Obsession" only to come back later in the same episode (and in 13 subsequent episodes as well).
  • Trill Symbionts are ridiculously hard to kill once joined to a humanoid Host. Dax has among other things died in a shuttle crash, from a heart attack during sex, and being shot by Force Lightning from an Energy Being. Once transferred into a new host body, it was literally as good as new within a couple of days, retaining all the memories and a great deal of the personalities of the former hosts. Dax had 8 hosts dying on it in over 350 years and is never mentioned as being particularly old or experienced by Trill standards.
  • Star Trek: Enterprise has Captain Archer take a shotgun blast to the back of the shoulder, with most of the blast somehow exiting through the front. After an off-screen visit to sickbay, he heads back down to the planet to make peace, with two fully functional arms.
• Late in Supernatural's seventh season, Castiel is found amnesiac but otherwise unharmed after being taken over and blown up by the leviathans. Exactly how he came back this time is never explained (While God has resurrected Castiel twice in the past, it's not clear if he did it the third time or not).
• Switched at Birth: After Travis and Natalie are hit by a drunk driver, they're both injured. We see him with his arm in a sling, and Natalie has a neck brace on. She also complains of pain in her back and an MRI is ordered to see if her pelvis was fractured. That is the last we see or hear about these injuries — their next appearances have them perfectly fine, and they're never brought up again.
• The hit British motoring show Top Gear is constantly invoking this trope by having one of the presenters apparently die in a filmed segment and then cutting back to them perfectly unharmed in the studio. This usually occurs after an on screen crash (planned or unplanned) or after a presenter vanishes in a large fireball. Sometimes a lampshade is hung, sometimes it's just ignored.
• WandaVision: The first scene begins In Medias Res, starting off with a scene of Vision driving his wife Wanda home. The fact that he was destroyed by Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War is not addressed at all, and is one of many signs that things are not as they seem in Westview. Those outside the town definitely notice, though, and it's a key point in their ongoing investigation of the town. In Episode 4, we are treated to the lovely image of what seems to be Vision's reanimated corpse. And then Episode 8 reveals that the Vision in Westview is not the corpse itself (which Wanda decided to leave behind after she saw how S.W.O.R.D. had him cut up in an attempt to revive him), but a recreation made out of her powers alongside the massive illusion that engulfed the town.
• The short-lived show The War Next Door has this as its premise. A retired secret agent and his arch-nemesis live next door in a suburb and constantly engage in battles. Each episode invariably ends with one of them (usually, the villain) dead, only to get better by the next episode. In fact, the pilot starts with the agent killing the villain before retiring, only for the villain to come back in the same episode. No explanation, of course.
• Used for comedic effect in several skits in Whose Line Is It Anyway?
  Colin Mochrie: Last time I saw him he tried to murder me. But when you're trying to kill someone by chopping their head off, rolling them up in a carpet and lighting it on fire, you better make sure they're dead!
• Like the aforementioned Master, Dr. Miguelito Lovless from The Wild Wild West, had at least two episodes ending where he appeared to have died, only to pop up again, no worse for the wear, never really explaining how he did.
• The X-Files: In "Arcadia", the Ubermenscher tulpa appears to kill Mike Raskub, leaving a bloody mess, but Mike returns to save Scully. In "Anasazi", the Cigarette Smoking Man orders a boxcar to be burned, with Mulder inside it, who turns out fine. A dying Cigarette Smoking Man was thrown down a set of stairs in "Requiem", showed up alive and was killed by black helicopters in "The Truth", and is still alive by "My Struggle". In The X-Files Season 10 comic, the Lone Gunmen have faked their deaths in "Jump the Shark", but still appear as ghosts in "The Truth".

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