Maybe you made a Heroic Sacrifice. Maybe you were unfortunate enough to be the hero's Satellite Love Interest turned Sacrificial Lamb. Maybe you were even the Jerkass villain and whichever hero defeated you didn't abide by the Thou Shalt Not Kill-rule. Either way, you're dead.
Luckily for you, there is a way to bring you back, through an old, forbidden ritual, a Magical Defibrillator, or something similar.
GAAAAASSSPP!!
Welcome back to the world of the living!
This trope comes into play whenever a character previously axed off is brought back to life, through magic, science, or both, and upon waking up takes a deep breath and sometimes coughs, similar to someone coming up from underwater.
Presumably, this is supposed to represent air coming back into the characters' lungs after a long time of, well, that not being the case. Often this will be accompanied by the characters' upper body shooting upright like they've just had a Catapult Nightmare and maybe even some Wake Up Fighting if that's what the character was doing before getting killed.
A Sub-Trope to Back from the Dead.
[[AC:Since this is somewhat of a Death Trope, all spoilers will be unmarked. Beware!
Examples:
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Comic Books
- Pictured above from Scott Pilgrim: After getting killed by Gideon, Scott realises that he has a 1UP which revives him. Upon coming back to life, he gasps for air.
Fan Works
- What a Strange Little Colt: Gabriel does this upon being revived, after he sacrifices himself.
Films — Animation
- Batman: Under the Red Hood:When Jason Todd is resurrected by the Lazarus Pit, he gasps loudly as he stands up and pulls his bandages off.
- The Lorax (2012): The Once-ler shoots upright and gasps after the Lorax brings him back to life from drowning via a make-shift Magical Defibrillator consisting of two Bar-Ba-Loots.
Films — Live-Action
- Drive (2011): A very subdued one after the Driver is stabbed.
- The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers: Gandalf gasps for air after being resurrected into Gandalf the White.
- Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie: Zordon gasps when revived at the end of the movie.
- Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl: Elizabeth gives one after Jack saves her from drowning, and then quickly cuts off her corset which was preventing her from breathing.
Literature
- In the Hyperion Cantos, when Paul Duré writes about the Resurrective Immortality of the Bikura, he describes the first breath of a reborn tribe member as "a rasp like water being poured into a leather pouch".
- Coffin Jobe, a minor character from the Secret Histories Urban Fantasy series, is a "necroleptic": he occasionally drops dead and then revives, much as a narcoleptic involuntarily falls asleep and awakens. It happens so often that he not only takes a large breath upon reviving but savors the rush when this inrush of oxygen restores his vigor.
Live-Action TV
- In one scene in Blood Ties (2007), we see the vampire Henry Fitzroy waking up with a gasp after sleeping through the day - it's implied that sleep for a vampire is indistinguishable from death.
- In Doctor Who and Torchwood, Jack Harkness has Resurrective Immortality due to being made a "fixed point in time". Every time he dies (which is often), he resurrects with a painful gasp.
- Forever: Given that Henry revives in a large body of water, gasping for air as he breaks the surface is the usual.
- Highlander: This trope is common throughout the franchise, but the series really codified it as part of the franchise lore. Immortals can be killed through wounds lethal to a human, they simply possess a Healing Factor that will revive them after a time. When that revival occurs, this trope is almost always used. It's especially notable when a "pre-Immortal" dies for the first time, "activating" their full Immortality.
- House of Anubis: In the season 2 finale, when Joy gets hit by Nina's lightning and dies, she's brought back to life by Victor. This leads to her immediately coughing after the color returns to her face, to show that she's awake
- Supernatural has a habit of killing and resurrecting its three leads, and several times the resurrections feature this. It happens to Sam in late Season 2, both Sam and Dean after being shot by hunters in Season 5, and to Castiel, after he's resurrected by an angel in Season 9.
Professional Wrestling
- Multiple angles involving The Undertaker. Most often, he's been locked in a casket and the casket either set on fire or set to explode and seemingly being eliminated forever ... only for Undertaker to return several weeks later and, after stalking his would-be assailant, demanding a rematch.
- Vince McMahon. The famous 2007 "Who Killed Vince" angle, where he got into his limousine (after a surreal ending to a Monday Night Raw'' episode) and the car suddenly exploded into flames (with McMahon seemingly still inside. The angle was supposed to last several weeks, but the events involving Chris Benoit hastened the end of the angle where McMahon appeared on-camera, explained that his involvement in the "Who Killed Vince" angle was a storyline, and then gave updates on the Benoit situation. An alternate ending to the "Who Killed Vince" storyline eventually came about.
Video Games
- Survivors that are resurrected with a Magical Defibrillator in Left 4 Dead 2 will sometimes do this.
- In the most elusive ending of Mass Effect 3, achieved by accumulating 5000+ Effective Military Strength points before the endgame and then choosing to Destroy the Reapers, we see a body in N7 armor lying motionless amidst the wreckage before suddenly gasping for air. While we don't see the person's face and their identity has never been revealed, most players assume that this figure is Commander Shepard, who dies in the (regular) Destroy, Synthesis, and Refusal endings (and Ascends To A Higher Plane Of Existence in the Control one).
Webcomics
- Strip #300 from Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic has Glon Smitharm-Bloodhand rise from his casket during his funeral rite. Glon had been dead more than a day at that point, so his resurrection comes as a huge surprise, and includes the requisite coughing and spluttering of someone newly revivified.
Western Animation
- The Cuphead Show!: In "Carn-Evil", when Mugman's distraction on seeing the Devil causes Cuphead (Mugman's brother) to lose a skee-ball match and get his soul sucked out of him by the machine, Mugman realizes this and quickly grabs his brother's soul by the tail-end, and when he returns it to Cuphead's gray body, he wakes up with a gasp in this manner.
- She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: In Season 5 episode "Save The Cat", She-Ra uses her Healing Hands on Catra to revive her. It seems that it doesn't work until she starts coughing before giving her a weak but affectionate "Hey, Adora".
- Transformers: Animated: Upon the AllSpark-fragment in his head resurrecting him after Megatron kills him (again), Starscream shoots upright and gasps for air, before tiredly admitting he might need a new approach.
