Back From The Dead / Fan Works

• Commonly occurs with Stevie from Wizards of Waverly Place in fanfiction, due to the general dissatisfaction with the fact (and the way) that she died.
• A Crooked Man: Johann resurrects the population of Genosha, the deceased members of the X-Men, Happy Hogan, Captain America, and MVP.
• Abraxas (Hrodvitnon):
  • Vivienne Graham is revealed to have been only temporarily dead after being devoured by Ghidorah. She's preserved and kept alive in a comatose state by San in his severed head, and he transforms and fuses with her to make them a human-Ghidorah Artificial Hybrid Kaiju.
  • It's also revealed that Ghidorah will always come back from death eventually so long as some piece of it remains — San's original Ghidorah-head hasn't been disposed of, and Ghidorah's minds including San's Evil Doppelgänger are already active.
• Always Visible: Lampshade Hanging. The fate of Delia's father is never revealed, but it is suspected that his dopplegangers are a consequence of him having died and his spirit haunting the earth. This is speculative information.
• In the Battlestar Galactica (2003) fic "All the Time in the Universe", the identity of the twelfth Cylon is Billy Keikeya rather than Ellen Tigh; he was brought back to life on the original resurrection ship after his death, but his memory of his Cylon status had been erased and he took ages to remember that he and Tigh, Tyrol and Anders were actually in favour of helping humanity rather than killing them.
• Alternate Destination: At the beginning, during a storm caused by Zarm, Linka is killed by a fallen tree. Later, Gaia brings her back by tampering with the timeline.
• Anglerfish: Jason's already back from the dead, and getting better control of the Pit that made his initial return so violent. His family talk him into coming back legally as well.

• Bound Destinies Trilogy: In chapter 21 of Blood and Spirit, Link dies after being fatally electrocuted by Veress. However, he only stays dead for a few minutes, as another spell of Majora's corruption brings him back to life in the very next chapter.
• My Brave Pony: Starfleet Magic:
  • Titan suddenly returns in the "Season 1 finale", and returns again in "The Movie".
  • In My Brave Pony: Star Fleet Magic III, Fratello's ghost combines with his replacement robot body.
• The Bridge (MLP): The Big Bad resurrects King Sombra so that he can wreak havoc in the Crystal Empire. When he's killed again by Cadence and Xenilla, he's revived again later so that he can partner up with Chrysalis in order to free Grogar from his imprisonment.
• Btvs: Seasons Rewrite: Early in Season 3, Angel undergoes the Trials as he did in the Angel episode "The Trial." Here, it's done to resurrect Jenny Calendar, and he succeeds.
• but i wrote the words to the swan song: Even if it took him a long time to come back, Romeo was resurrected at one point off screen and he reunites with Juliet at the end of the story.
• Child of the Storm has a couple of cases:
  • In chapter 45 Doctor Strange brings back Sif, who'd had her heart ripped out and Harry Dresden, who'd used his Death Curse to launch Gravemoss halfway into orbit. He's also implied to have saved/resurrected Coulson.
  • Technically Thor, having died as James Potter.
  • Harry in chapter 71, resurrected and possessed by the utterly enraged Phoenix Force which promptly goes on an epic rampage. This makes sense when you realise that the White Phoenix of the Crown is Lily Potter.
  • Voldemort's spirit regains a physical body a full year ahead of canon, courtesy of stealing some of Harry's power and using Wormtail's body as spare parts.
• Children of Time: Played with.
  • Professor Moriarty falls to his death in the Reichenbach Falls but enters a temporal rift instead and does not actually die (no one else knows this for several years). Later, he suffers Character Death, only to show up early in the next season as a clone.
  • Beth Lestrade is shot to death but returns to life when the timeline in which her death occurred is retconned to never having happened.
  • Sherlock Holmes lives out his natural lifespan and dies of old age... but makes one last effort at being able to reunite with his wife in the future, having his body preserved in burial. Beth has a geneticist rejuvenate his body, restoring Sherlock to life and to his twenties.
• The Darker Knight has this happen to damn near every character... except Hannah Montana.
• Destiny Intertwined: It's possible for an exceptionally powerful user of healing magic to resurrect a deceased individual, provided that the subject has only died very recently. Jhordinn technically died and was brought back four times as a result of health complications from his failed attempt at self-corruption.
• Game Theory: Precia succeeds in bringing her daughter Alicia back to life.
• Ghosts of Evangelion: All characters have come back to life after dying during Third Impact.
• The Great Starship Battle: Chewbacca is killed when the Borg destroy the Millennium Falcon but is later resurrected by the Infinite Improbability Drive.
• Happy Accident: After Felicity accidentally kills Black Siren, when Constantine helps Oliver find a Lazarus Pit to bring her back to life, he ends up resurrecting Earth-1 Laurel Lance in her counterpart's body, leaving Laurel feeling bemused to be in a body identical to her own but with such 'anomalies' as extra tattoos and a nose ring.
• Carmen Cole, who was killed in the novel Hottie by Jonathan Bernstein, was rebuilt into a Cyborg in Hottie 3: The Best Fan Fic in the World.
• In If Wishes Were Ponies, after hearing about Ghosts and accidentally helping Professor Binns go on his Last Great Adventure, the Cutie Mark Crusaders call upon Twilight for information from Equestria regarding Ghosts. Sending over a library book, the CMC, Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and the Weasley Family casts a spell that manages to bring Myrtle Warrens aka: "Moaning Myrtle" back to life again.
• In Jonathan Joestar, The First JoJo, all of the people that had been killed by Dio are revived when he is defeated.
• Wildfire dies battling the Anti-Monitor at the beginning of Kara of Rokyn, but he returns in Hellsister Trilogy, where he reveals he spent centuries transformed into a cloud of anti-matter floating in space until he was able to find a way to return home.
• In Kingdom Hearts 3: Final Stand, Master Xehanort is revealed to have revived several characters, such as Vanitas, the Riku Replica, and Master Eraqus, to serve as his Soul Jars.
• Law & Order: UK fics:
  • The story "Happy New Year" has it turn out that DS Matt Devlin was Faking the Dead, having been whisked off to a remote hospital to recover from his bullet wounds, giving his partner DS Ronnie Brooks and would-be lover Alesha Philips the shock of their lives when he's brought back to testify against his assailant.
  • "Declassified" (link) has Matt Devlin, shot to death and inexplicably recovering right before Alesha's and Ronnie's eyes. He's forced to admit that he's immortal (it's a Crossover with Highlander, and technically with Horatio Hornblower, as he admits to them that his real name is Archie Kennedy).
• A few examples in The Lion King Adventures:
  • After his death in Friends to the End, Hago comes back four times. He is resurrected in the stories The Return of Hago, Darkness Falls, Tama's Trouble and Tojo's Tyranny.
  • Scar is resurrected in Rebirth.
  • Simba, Nala, Haiba, Zazu, Sarafina and the Interceptor are resurrected after the Writer is killed in The End.
  • Averted with beloved characters Tama, Tojo, Mufasa and Sarabi.
• In The Man with No Name, Mal ends up being killed by the Big Bad. He's revived by the very same Big Bad after a breakdown, oddly enough.
• Maria Campbell of the Astral Clocktower: Since the fic takes place in the distant future of Dark Souls, this is possible. Rare, but possible. Much is made of a knight's duty going beyond death, and with their loyalty they are the most likely to be able to keep their body and Dark Soul together and resurrect. They're also the most likely to be so horribly mutilated that there's no possibility of resurrection. Having a Light Mage on hand for healing greatly increases the likelihood of a resurrection, but they tend not to hang around battlefields. Either way, it's normal to hang onto a corpse for at least a few days in case it decides to get up eventually.
• Mega Man: Defender of the Human Race: The Stardroids' plan hinges on reviving Sunstar and Luna from the dead. They succeed with Sunstar in chapter 153.
• Mega Man Reawakened: Both Robert and Bass are this.
• Metroid: Kamen Rider Generations is seemingly a mix of Fossil Revival or spirits of the past due to the story taking place within Kamen Rider Ghost
  • First has Kaito Kumon. Later he returns from the afterlife for the second time to challenge Samus.
  • Chase in his character arc, with Gou being overjoyed as a result.
  • Later came Gandrayda in her character arc, alongside Rundas, and Ghor. Gandrayda eventually returns for the second time thanks to the Tutankhamun Eyecon and aids Samus, Gou, Mitsuzane, and Alain.
  • Like Gandrayda after her, Ghor is brought back to life by the Edison, Billy the Kid, and Benkei Ghost Eyecons.
• Mike Pines: After managing to expel Molten Freddy from his body, Mike is shocked to discover that the process made him (mostly) human again.
• Mirai SMP: Travis unlocks the ability to revive a fallen player upon his death, which he uses on Cooper, despite his protests.
• My Immortal: This happens several times, once memorably when Draco commits suicide by slitting his wrists and then miraculously comes back with no explanation whatsoever, and again when the author became angry with her real-life friend Raven and killed off her avatar character, Willow (And had Professor Lumpkin rape her dead body...), only to have her reappear and seem to slip back into Goffik Hogwarts life normally.
• My Little Mages: The Nightmare's Return: Celestia is killed by Nightmare Moon and the Grand Master in Chapter 4, but the last scene of the chapter has Philomena carry off her body. She reappears alive and well in the final chapter, implying that Philomena somehow revived her.
• Ned Stark Lives: At the very end, Robb Stark and Ramsay Snow fight to the death during their trial by combat. Robb wins the battle almost handily, but Ramsay still cheats his way through and mortally wounds him before dying afterwards. Fortunately however, because of Robb's warg abilities his soul escapes into his wolf, Grey Wind, and tells Arya (who is also in Nymeria's body) about his situation. So Thoros of Myr, who is also aware of Robb's soul within Grey Wind, takes his body and brings him back to life with the fires of R'hllor. It's tear-jerkingly heartwarming.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion: Genocide: Asuka got mortally wounded during the final battle, and she died. Before her soul was definitely gone, though, Yui absorbed her and Shinji’s souls into the core of Unit-01 and kept them in there until they were ready to return to the physical world.
• New Tamaran: Raven had made her own version of the Purple Ray underneath Titans Tower, modified to resurrect her or her friends if they were ever killed.
• The Night Unfurls: This is what happens to Kyril in Chapter 32 after his assassination in the previous chapter, thanks to his Resurrective Immortality. For the audience, this is not really surprising, but to Celestine and Kyril's assassin, this is an Oh, Crap! moment.
• The Nut Dealer Expanded Universe: Jevil revives Mia Fey to thank Phoenix Wright for helping with his Ultra Eden plan.
• The Old Life Alive Again: The premise of this fanfic is that all the Nobodies that die throughout the event of Days (Vexen, Lexaeus, Zexion, Marluxia, Larxene and especially Xion) are revived, courtesy of Genie.
• The Oops Cycle: In canon, Mariel (the former Angel of Memory and then Demon Princess of Oblivion) was devoured by Haagenti during his own ascension to Princedom. Here, she is regurgitated during Haagenti's redemption. She ends up being made his first Wordbound (Appreciation) and acts as his Number Two.
• Infinity Crisis;
  • Obviously everyone who was Snapped is brought back to life in the main fic, but Barry and Wally manage to bring Pietro back even before the Snap is undone, Constantine works with Nebula to restore Gamora to her body from the Soul Stone once the heroes retrieve the Gauntlet, and Shuri and Cyborg are able to reactivate the Vision when the fighting ends.
  • Tomorrow's Guardians reveals that Leonard Snart survived his death but was somehow transferred into the timeline of The Orville. Later, Ultron is revealed to have also survived his seeming destruction to escape into this timeline.
  • In Distant Cousins, Lex Luthor is able to revive General Astra as part of his new agenda.
• The Pokemon fanfic Jessica provides one of the easiest examples. After Cameron apologizes, Jessica is restored to his team, and as his own original Pikachu.
• In the Hetalia: Axis Powers Alternate Universe Fic 1983: Doomsday Stories, it turns out that Hungary came back for both Austria and their daughter despite having died from the chaos of Doomsday. While there's also a nod to the Roman Empire's after-death appearances in canon, it's lampshaded by Austria himself that it's not at all normal or logical.
• Subverted with Miki in Pokémon Strangled Red. Steven uses the power of Missingno to resurrect his deceased Charizard, but it's revealed at the end that she isn't really alive again.
• Averted for the most part in the Pony POV Series, as the one rule that Celestia's brother Mortis, Concept of Death, has is that everyone only lives once, so who's dead stays dead. That said, it's played straight at the end of Dark World, where he ignores this rule as a wedding present to Queen Libra (aka Alicorn!Rarity), allowing her to resurrect everyone who died during Discord's thousand year reign who died as a direct result of his actions or those of his minions (those who died of indirect chaos, old age, or who chose not to come back, were excluded).
• During the Final Battle of the Pony POV Series Chaos Verse, Discord and Fluttercruel manage to kill Big Bad Nightmare Phobia, but then her spirit absorbs the Shadows of Oblivion, allowing her to transform into an Eldritch Abomination that breaks back into Limbo for round two.
• In the Power Rangers: Dino Thunder fic “Duty & Honor”, as the Rangers are forced to face the threat of Zordon’s brother, Xondar, seeking to kill all Power Rangers to ‘punish’ them for the death of his brother, the Dino Thunder team receive aid in the form of Zordon himself, who survived his ‘death’ at Andros’s hands due to his time warp allowing his essence to be converted into an energy form through the actions of an ancient order.
• The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fic "Palinopsia" features a variation of this when a transporter accident causes Jadzia Dax to be essentially brought back to life, as a rarely-used cargo transporter suffers a massive power surge that causes it to reintegrate the last transporter pattern that went through it.
• In Two for the Price of One, a chain of events lead to Willow Rosenberg visiting the Vanishing Point to bring Leonard Snart back to life; the timeless nature of Vanishing Point means that, even though his body was blown apart, Snart's cells are frozen in the moment before they actually died, so Willow is able to use DNA samples from the Waverider medical system to summon Snart's cells and put his body back together.
• Quicken: The story starts out when Emma is mortally wounded during a brutal fight, gains powers right before dying, and her power brings her back to life… nine months later.
• This is the freakin' point of Rise of the Galeforces. To make a long story short, a LOT of the late Supers from the Golden Era are cloned by Aperture Science and Technology in People Jars, but a good number of them are broken out by the Parr family so they can start a new life in the current timeframe of the story.
• Howard and Maria Stark comes back to life in the Second Chances Series and the fic series deal with the aftermath of it.
• Moriarty and Watson in Sherlock Season 4.
• In Slightly Damned: Wind of Redemption and Rebirth, Sakido, as well as all the other Rebirths are souls of the deceased that have been brought back to life by The Master.
• Chapter 40 of Son of the Sannin reveals that Obito Uchiha resurrected Rin Nohara. The process granted her Wood Release powers, a Healing Factor capable of regenerating lost limbs and eliminated her need for food (she still requires water to sustain herself, though).
• In Super Milestone Wars, Princess Euphelia & Emperor Charles from Code Geass, Nia from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann and a whole bunch of deceased villains from different parts of fiction.
• The Star Wars Legends Sword of the Jedi Trilogy fanfic has Jacen Solo come back to life in the final book. He dies again, but not before redeeming himself.
• In Thousand Shinji, Asuka, Misato and Hikari died during the Angel War. Shinji and Rei caused an Impact event to bring Asuka and Misato back, and then the three pilots revived Hikari.
• The Three Kings fanfic series begins with Starscream waking up on a distant planet a thousand years after his death in the finale. Prowl follows in his footsteps in the sequel.
• In The Three Kings: Hunt, Bakura returns to being alive after more than 5000 years being dead
• In the Doctor Who fic, Time and Space by Eureka 2000, Cass is brought back from the dead by the Rani and is placed in a holding cell with Epsilon who just so happens to be a Gallifreyan. They are both very unhappy about this.
  Epsilon: Oh, for crying out loud!
• In the Charmed (1998) fic "Tempus Fugit", after Prue is spared her death due to the intervention of a future version of Paige, Andy returns to her life as a Whitelighter, the Cleaners altering the relevant memories to give the impression that Andy has just been away for a couple of years rather than dead so that he can resume his old life.
• In the Supernatural/Wynonna Earp crossover "Told That Devil to Take You Back", God/Chuck and Amara don't just stop at bringing Mary Winchester back to life, but also resurrect Emma (Dean's Amazon daughter), Adam Milligan, Amy Pond (Sam's old Kitsune friend), Henry Winchester, Bela Talbot and Charlie Bradbury, Charlie joining Sam and Wynnona in Purgatory while the others end up meeting Dean and (for the most part) joining him in the bunker in Kansas.
• A few characters in Twillight Sparkle's awesome adventure come back from the dead over the story:
  • Doctor Whooves comes back twice over the course of the story, neither time with any explanation given whatsoever.
  • Enemy Boss Leader comes back in the middle of the story, also with no explanation.
  • ADMIRAL Awesome Yonasomun Armageddon comes back in time to be a Deus ex Machina during the Final Standoff of Final Fate. This revival is notable as being the only one ever given any Hand Wave: It turned out that he was a Jedi Knight.
• Hearts of Ice: Ranma gets killed by Kuei (a kind of Chinese ghosts) while fighting his way to the Ancient One's den. Nonetheless, he is taken to the Phoenix's mountain — located in the realm of the souls' beasts — by one friend, and the bird lets him use its nest to go back to the mortal plane.
• In the cornice in the ground, Harry is killed after being shot by Richmond Valentine, but he is brought back to life by Eggsy, who has the gift of necromancy.
• In Killing Game Deluxe, everyone who died has somehow been brought back from the dead
• In Codex Equus, there are several ways to do this, but thus far only one which is both permanent and has no downsides:
  • During the Final Ragnarok event, the Grand Primevals permit the other four members of Princess Brightglow's 'Power Rangers team (which were among the many superheroes that came to be in the Second Age) to return to the world of the living for a day to help her in the battle with Ragnarøkkr, the High King of the Shadowed Ones.
  • Mistletoe Dreamer is a talented necromancer and uses it to return from the dead as a evil spirit who can possess others. She ultimately tricks some Alicorn Ascendancy members into making her a false Alicorn body, at which point she murdered them all. She then uses a spell to resurrect villains from across history as a Legion of Doom. Her spell, however, requires another living being to be sacrificed for each resurrection.
  • The one true way thus far to lastingly return from death with no strings attached is to ascend to demi-godhood. However, one mustn't become a death god, or else they're still tied to the afterlife and not quite alive again.
• A Special Kind of Magic: In Chapter 6, it's revealed that Naofumi was one of the victims of the Decimation, so this trope applies to his backstory.
• Star Trek: Phoenix: This is a central part in the process of becoming an alicorn — ponies who ascend to this status do so when they perform immense magical feats that overwhelm them and destroy their bodies, and the actual process of ascension involves essentially willing themselves back to life and creating a new alicorn body in the process. This happened to Celestia in the distant past (raising the sun for their first time burned her body to ash; she returned as an alicorn a day later) and, in the story, to Sunset, who comes back to life as an alicorn after being vaporized while trying to contain a warp core collapse.
• Synthesis : Unlike other Vocaloids whom still alive when being synthesized albeit being close to death, Luka was dead during the synthesis process. The machine indeed successfully resurrect her as a Vocaloid, but she suffers from memory loss and a lack of common sense.
• Tales of Kitty-Whiskers and Ladybug: The Miraculous Ladybug can bring people back from the dead. In chapter 2, a witness at Mike Meekins trial is Rekta Resu, his boss who he killed as the akuma Bad Badger. And in chapter 10, Snow-Fur unwittingly kills Hawkmoth, but Trucy and Apollo knows that he's be back after Trucy is purified and Apollo fixes everything.
• The Big Bad in Warriors of the World: Soldiers of Fortune used to be a Magic Knight megalomaniac who lived more than 500 years ago.
• "we'll bury these old ghosts here" looks at the characters of Brooklyn Nine-Nine in the aftermath of the Snap (Avengers: Infinity War), with the Snap's victims including Amy, Kevin, Terry, Gina, Scully and Hitchcock. When the Avengers undo the Snap, all those returning are shocked at the changes that have taken place in the last five years, ranging from Terry's confusion that Jake is "suddenly" a sergeant to Amy's shock that her husband of a week ago (from her perspective) has been sleeping with Rosa for the last two years.
• In What If?, Neo initially pulls this off by transferring his essence into the Matrix after Cypher pulled the plug, allowing him to exist as a 'glitch' in the system, but takes it to the next level in The Return when he transfers back into his recovered body in the real world.
• The What You Already Know series features Daniel apparently coming back from the dead (in reality, he was just in an extreme self-induced coma) after the Battle of Antarctica, and later he uses his new healing ability to bring Sam back to life after Anubis tries to kill her.
• Several times in Young Justice: Darkness Falls. Ra's Al Gul was mentioned to be resurrected, as well as Jason Todd, Superman and Wally West (though technically he was never dead to begin with).
• Implied to be the case with Dr. Marvin Monroe in So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, A-D'oh.
• Chapter 21 is a major Wham Episode in You will always have a part of me nobody else is ever gonna see because thanks to a combination of enemy Stands, Jotaro unwittingly creates a new timeline where both Noriaki Kakyoin and Narancia Ghirga avoid their canon deaths and survive to the present day as a result of the Jotaro from 2007 advising Avdol to use Magician Red more often (which helps him and Iggy survive the fight against Vanilla Ice) and telling Kakyoin not to pull off a Heroic Sacrifice while he was in 1988 Hong Kong.
• In 12 Brides and a Strawberry, after it's decided that Bambietta Basterbine will become one of Ichigo Kurosaki's brides, she is brought back to life by Kisuke Urahara.