History Main / DeathIsASlapOnTheWrist

** ''VideoGame/DiabloIII'' makes death even more of a slap on the wrist. "You have died. Your items have lost 10% durability." You don't even lose any experience points or leave your body behind unlike the previous game!
*** The console version makes it even more a slap on the wrist, giving you the option to resurrect right at your corpse if you want.

* At one point ''AnarchyOnline'' used to have all unsaved experience and equipment (with save points reasonably frequent throughout the game world) lost, meaning if you didn't save your character's state, got some supremely expensive item, and then was killed in pvp, it was actually possible for your killer to ''loot that item!'' All that was phased out as the game progressed, now you lose nothing and your lost experience winds up in a pool that you can regain over time, so in AnarchyOnline, DeathIsASlapOnTheWrist.

* CatPlanet!

** Even more so in the case of drowning. When grabbed and dragged under, you reappear nearby with no loss of health, lives, not even a loading screen.
*** Except for in the final level - going back to the checkpoint is seriously painful because of how NintendoHard the level is.

* Die in ''VideoGame/PrinceOfPersia2008'' and Elika will will use her magic to return you to the last place you were on solid ground or the start of the current battle as appropriate.
** She saves your ass even ''[[GameplayAndStorySegregation when she's completly helpless due to a boss' spell!]]''

* ''[[VideoGame/BugsBunnyLostInTime Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time]]'' on the PlayStation. You have unlimited lives, and your only penalty for dying is being sent back to the last checkpoint you touched, with all of the Clocks and Golden Carrots you've picked up. Hell, if you die at a boss, the boss will still have the damage you gave him beforehand!

* Your critters in ''VideoGame/{{Patapon}}''. They can die. And again. And again. But as long as you retrieve their caps before they dissapear, you can revive them ''for free'' once the level is finished ''without any penalty at all''. Heck, in the sequel, the only drawback of getting your hero unit killed is 20 seconds 'till respawn!
** Hatapon (A.K.A. The one with the flag) is an exception. If he dies you fail the mission, similarly to what happens when all your army gets destroyed. However this is unlikely, given his ridiculously high HP.
** However, certain boss battle attacks, like Dodonga's Om Nom Nom, are an one-hit kill which ''not only'' destroys the Patapon, it also destroys his cap, so your little guy will be [[FinalDeath gone forever.]]

** Ditto ''VideoGame/EarthBound'', with the addition of having your PP set to zero. In fact, in ''[=EarthBound=]'', the money you receive from battles is automatically put into storage, so you're not even likely to be carrying any money to lose!
*** Actually, near the end of the game, ATM money storage service is replaced with some organisation charging huge fees on stocked money. And all of your party members are dead except the lead with 0 PP. More of an Aversion, actually.
*** Played straight in ''VideoGame/{{Mother3}}'', not only is money a literal non-issue in the first three chapters, but you don't even lose any PP!

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyMysticQuest'' enables players to restart battles if they lose.
** And if the fight started with the player being ambushed, it'll just be a normal fight next time.

* In ''VideoGame/TheGodfather: The Game'' (at least the Wii version), death is pretty laughable. For example: Let's say you're at the point of the game where you need to go start bombing the armories of other families to take control of various parts of the city. You shoot your way inside, inevitably triggering a mob war on your way in, you plant the bomb, and you, unfortunately, don't make it outside within the 10 second time limit. No worries; you're dead. You get transported to the nearest hospital, you don't lose any money, experience, health, skills, anything. On top of that, the bombing still counts, and you're declared the winner of the mob war you triggered. It is literally more advantageous to sit there and get blown up on purpose than to try to escape. Slap on the wrist? HA! Death is a shortcut to the hospital!
** The sequel expands this to enemy made men, who won't stay dead until a particular execution style is used on them.

* In ''{{Killer7}}'' this is apparently played straight, but in the long run, it's averted. Dying as Dan, Kaede, Kevin, Coyote, Con or Mask simply transports you back to the last Harman's Room you visited. You can then switch to Garcian and make your way back to the place where the persona got killed, retrieve it, get transported back to Harman's Room and resurrect it by [[PressXToNotDie repeatedly pressing X]]. You even get to keep all the blood you've collected. '''However''', this means playing through the same stretch of level ''at least three times'': 1) the original run before dying, 2) as Garcian up to the spot where you died, 3) a third run with the restored persona. Considering that the enemies respawn constantly, and Garcian is the weaker member of Killer7, dying isn't the walk in the park it's supposed to be. [[spoiler:Although, technically, all the characters are dead already]].
* ''{{Solatorobo}}'' takes this approach to death...not that you'll die a whole lot, mind you. Even if you fall off a floating mini-island in a level like Sealyham you'll simply reappear back at the point where you died, same health level and all.

* The board game ''ArkhamHorror''. In most cases, you don't actually "die". Being reduced to zero stamina or sanity is a trip to the hospital/sanitarium. You will lose half of your items but you get to choose and you round down. Being ''devoured'', on the other hand, is FinalDeath for your investigator.

[[folder:Film]]
* Chucky of the ChildsPlay series. He ends up being killed at the end of each film, but is always brought back at the beginning of the next film. As its been put:
--> Go ahead and kill me, I'll be back! I always come back! But ''dying'' is such a ''bitch''!
[[/folder]]

* Played for laughs in ''VideoGame/AdventureQuest''. TheGrimReaper tells you he's filled his quota of souls for the day and [[DontFearTheReaper sends you back saying you owe him one]]. You wind up in town, having lost the progress you made on any quest you were doing and at about 40% health, but the latter's fixed for free by talking to an NPC on the same screen.

** This penalty is lessened by ''DragonQuestIX''. You can store gold with the NPC Banker, in 1000 gold units, and it will not be touched even if your party dies. You will then only lose 1/2 of the gold in your inventory.

* Perhaps most famously, ''Anime/DragonBallZ''. Characters who die can wait (and train) while others can collect the Dragonballs and bring them back. Apparently you can even take stuff with you on the way up...
** Justified: It was Bulma's radar that invoke this trope in first place. The balls turns into rocks for a whole year and King Kai mentions that a universal rule is that Dragonballs can't revive a person that has been dead for more than ''a year''. Now without the radar, that would be a nearly impossible task to be revived more than once, especially since her radar is so advanced compared to others (The red ribbon ones for example). Thats why it was so complicated to revive Goku in the Buu saga. The events of The Shadow Dragon Saga subverts this trope even further. On top of this, Shenlong is quite literal minded when asked to revive someone; wish for everyone killed by Frieza to live? You forgot Vegeta's victims. Or you can just follow Oolong's example and wish for panties while someone else is trying to wish for revival.

* From its first (Advanced) edition onward, ''DungeonsAndDragons'' has always had a "raise dead" spell that clerics could eventually learn. Once you reach high enough level, coming back from the dead is just a matter of having enough gold pieces' worth of gems and resting for a week afterward. At higher levels, clerics learn the "resurrection" spell, which can bring a character back from the dead with ''full hit points'', ready to wade right back into battle, even if the only piece of him remaining intact before the resurrection was a single toe. For even higher level clerics, there is True Ressurection. Which brings you back to life even if your enemies killed you, burned your body, then divided your ashes into four urns and scattered them all in seperate continents, possibly over twenty years ago.

* Most of the time, ''StarTrekOnline'' has no penalty for death at all, you just have to wait a few seconds to respawn. While playing specific "Elite" multiplayer missions, you will get injuries when you die, which you must heal using items or by visiting an NPC. You can also activate an optional higher difficulty setting that does the same in story missions. Even then it's still largely in the slap on the wrist territory. The injuries will only noticeably affect gameplay if you have many stacked on at once, the healing items are not expensive and the NPC will heal them for free.

* In ''LeisureSuitLarry 6'', Larry can die just like characters in older Sierra games (including the first three ''Larry'' games), but in 6 a player is given the option to "Try Again" which resets Larry to exactly where he was just before the player did whatever caused Larry's death.

->'''Lynne''': Ha ha! I died again!
->'''Sissel''': I thought you'd be a little more grave, under the circumstances.
->'''Lynne''': Yeah, well, this is the third time, after all. [[ThePollyanna It's scary what a girl can get used to, don't you think?]]
-->-- ''VideoGame/GhostTrick''

* Quite an unusual example for the genre, but in ''SaveTheDate'', not only is your date's death a relatively trivial occurrence, it's integral to making progress in the game.

->'''Sissel''': ...... I thought you'd be a little more grave, under the circumstances.
->'''Lynne''': Yeah, well, this is the third time, after all... It's scary what a girl can get used to, don't you think?
-->-''VideoGame/GhostTrick''

* ''AgeOfConan'': The death penalty lasted for 10 minutes and was a 2 point deduction to your attack stat, which did very little to melee classes and absolutely nothing to casters.

* In the Flash game ''GinormoSword'', you just end up back on the map screen if you die. You don't lose any gold, but since it can take a very long time to kill a boss, dying will sometimes cost you a lot of time.

* Perhaps most famously, ''Manga/DragonBall Z''. Characters who die can wait (and train) while others can collect the Dragonballs and bring them back. Apparently you can even take stuff with you on the way up...

->''"Ha ha! I died again!"''
-->-- '''Lynne''', ''VideoGame/GhostTrick''