When a character who is alive is mistakenly believed to be dead. Quite often includes the character being shown his own death certificate. Often includes being declared Legally Dead, but isn't necessarily restricted to that. In the most hilarious cases, it may result in a case of Attending Your Own Funeral and hearing a Premature Eulogy.
Usually said as a Stock Phrase, with people and characters saying at least the "exaggerated" part when lampshading the fact they were alive all along.
Named after a statement that Mark Twain didn't actually say, kind of.
The actual quote was from a letter
he wrote to the New York Journal:
Subtropes
- Disney Death: The viewers witness an apparent death, but the character is still alive.
- Faking the Dead: The character faked their death and has now come back just when they were "confirmed" to be dead.
- Mistaken Death Confirmation: The character's death is confirmed by another character via lack of life signs or an obviously lethal injury.
- Mistaken for Dying: The character is believed to be dying, but they only have a minor illness — if they're sick at all.
- No Longer with Us: The character merely went somewhere else, but this was misunderstood as an apparent euphemism for death.
- No One Could Survive That!: Other characters in-universe witness an apparent death, but the character is still alive.
- Not Dead, Just Asleep: A sleeping or unconscious character is mistaken for dead.
- Not Quite Dead: The seemingly dead antagonist is revealed to have survived.
- Not Now, We're Too Busy Crying Over You: The character announces their own survival, but gets a Not Now, Kiddo response from the mourners.
- Not Too Dead to Save the Day: The survival allows the character to make a Deus ex Machina (though this one has a variant where the character stays dead).
A favorite tactic of supernatural killers, who return in the sequels after being thought to be destroyed in the previous film.
See also First Law of Resurrection, where the character was meant to be Killed Off for Real, but was brought back from the dead in sequels. A form of Dramatic Irony if the audience is aware he's alive while the characters aren't. Often goes hand in hand with Our Hero Is Dead. It can be caused where someone is thought to have die (or killed), and reported as such, but they Never Found the Body.
As this is a Death Trope, unmarked spoilers abound. Beware.
Examples:
- 2.5 Dimensional Seduction: Aria Kisaki believes her father, Yo Kisaki, might actually be dead, as she overheard a phone call between her grandmother and her mom that discussed someone who recently died, with her father being the most likely person they were referring to. However, Okumura connects the dots and proves that her father is still alive, with Yo Kisaki adopting the Pen Name of Higarashi, becoming the mangaka of the still on-going Liliel: Side Story series that the manga club loves. Aria then asks her mom who she was talking to her grandma about, which turned out to be an unrelated relative who owed her money.
- A Certain Magical Index: Kakine Teitoku, a.k.a. "Dark Matter", is brutally beaten up by a berserk Accelerator, after he stabs one of the few people Accelerator actually cares about right as she's trying to reason with him to spare Teitoku's life. After being buried waist-deep in the pavement and having his face quite literally sheared off, the #2 Level 5 is presumed deceased... until he resurfaces in the New Testaments, as bat shit as ever and completely white now as a result of his Dark Matter fueled regeneration. Unfortunately for him, Takitsubo's AIM Stalker causes one of his Beetle Army members to go rogue, kill him and take over his identity, memories, and power, but with a kind and well-meaning personality.
- Dragon Ball: Goku seems to be written off as dead by his friends for most of the King Piccolo saga, even though there's no indication of him actually dying. He just went after the mutant that killed Krillin and Bulma already declares him killed in action, not even considering the possibility that he might still be alive (something that Bulma would admit to later on after realizing her mistake). King Piccolo thought the same thing after their first battle where he seemingly killed him; he was quite surprised when Goku arrived to save Tien.
- Durarara!!: In the finale, after finally attempting to kill Shizuo, Izaya fails and is hit into another building by his nemesis where he suffers from internal bleeding, leading to a Trail of Blood. He then is forced to run from several airborne vending machines as he attempts to get away. Izaya finally then engages Shizuo in a fight in a last-ditch attempt at a Xanatos Gambit. He gets both his arms broken and is shot by Vorona with a ballistic knife. Izaya is able to escape in the end, but his odds of survival are only fifty-fifty, and he is last seen saying he does not want to die anywhere near Shizuo. It's confirmed that he did survive, though none of the characters know of his whereabouts as he never returned to Ikebukuro and thus never told anyone he was alive. At least, until he decided to troll Namie by E-mailing her.
- Fairy Tail:
- Lyon throws himself off a cliff with Racer of the Oracion Seis to protect Gray and Sherry from being killed by Racer's attempted explosive suicide attack, leaving them both to think he's dead after the bomb goes off and causing Sherry (thanks to the dark magic activating to switch people's moral alignments) to briefly go crazy-evil. Turns out, Lyon managed to cut the bomb off Racer and then shielded them both with a hastily-crafted ice wall, though the effort briefly knocked him out, and he returns with Racer as Gray is preventing Sherry from trying to murder Natsu and Lucy. He nearly invokes this word for word.
- Up until the Sirius Island arc, most of the world believed the Black Wizard Zeref had been dead for centuries with various dark guilds and cults using his left-behind dark magics to cause havoc or resurrect him. As it turns out, Zeref is very much alive into the present...though he certainly wishes otherwise.
- At the end of the same arc, Acnologia shows up and uses his dragon roar to vaporize the entire island, seemingly killing every Fairy Tail member present. Following a seven year Time Skip, everyone who was thought to have died suddenly returns to Magnolia. Right before Acnologia could destroy the island, the spirit of the guild's founder, Mavis Vermillion, used the spell Fairy Sphere to suspend the island in time, making it look like it had vanished for seven years (as she did not have enough power to manually undo the spell sooner). As a consequence, however, those who were trapped inside did not age a single day.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
- In part 2, Stroheim is believed dead by Joseph, only to show up later as a cyborg.
- At the end of part 2, it's Joseph's turn to be believed dead. He shows up at his own funeral with his newlywed wife, Suzi Q. They were actually going to inform the rest of the cast that he was alive, but the latter forgot to telegram them.
- In part 3, Avdol is presumed dead after a fight with other Stand users. He is later revealed to have been simply recovering from his wounds, which was known by all the main characters excluding Polnareff, whom they assumed would not be able to keep the secret and would thus endanger their recovering friend.
- Lupin III:
- Lupin is apparently shot by a sniper and falls from the getaway chopper in Lupin III: Missed by a Dollar, only to reappear alive and well later on and play a Big Damn Hero to the rest of his cornered gang.
- Lupin III: Voyage to Danger has both Jigen and Goemon apparently killed. The former appeared to die in a massive explosion; he escaped via a hidden tunnel. The latter was stabbed by a thrown knife and fell from a cliff into the sea; his Absurdly Sharp Blade deflected the knife just enough to miss his heart, and he was later rescued by a local fisherman.
- My Hero Academia: Endeavor’s oldest son Toya was believed dead after incinerating himself after Endeavor deemed him a failure due to his lack of resistance to his fire quirk. The League of Villains kept him alive and he resurfaced later as the Ax-Crazy villain Dabi. He takes pleasure in confronting Endeavor with the truth. He does die at the end of the series for real
- Naruto: Everyone in the story thought that Madara Uchiha/Tobi died a long time ago. Turns out to be averted in the case of Madara, who was brought Back from the Dead, but Tobi is Obito, who was crushed "to death" in Kakashi's Gaiden. He was saved (half of him, anyway) by Madara. Who was still alive for a long period of time after he was believed to be dead anyway.
- One Piece:
- This happens to Luffy a few times where after receiving a vicious Curb-Stomp Battle, his enemy thinks he's dead... until he returns to challenge them again. This happened twice in his fights with Crocodile.
- In Skypiea, Pagaya is assumed to have been killed by Enel after he's last seen pushing his daughter Conis out of the way before being hit by one of Enel's lightning bolts. He turns up after the fighting is over no worse for wear, having fallen to the White Sea before being rescued by refugees escaping Angel Island.
- During the Time Skip, where everyone thought the entire Straw Hat crew was dead because they had been gone for two years, not know they were actually training in secret. This gave a bunch of impostors the opportunity to take advantage of their MIA status and impersonate them, though not very well. After Sentomaru exposed the frauds, the pirates they had recruited truly thought Luffy was dead...until Sentomaru revealed that the guy the fake Luffy was threatening was the real deal, indicating that the Straw Hats were alive after all.
- Sabo, Luffy and Ace's third brother, was last seen being shot with a cannon by a Celestial Dragon many years ago, his body never being found after his boat blew up. He returns in Dressrosa as the Number Two of the Revolutionary Army, where he reveals that he was rescued by Dragon before he could drown and developed Identity Amnesia, only being able to remember his name and the fact that he really didn't want to return to his parents; his memory only returned after he read the news about Ace's execution, the shock of which drove him into a coma for three days.
- The pirate Jack was reported dead after he picked a fight with Issho, Sengoku, and Tsuru. However, the Mink Tribe, which was recently attacked by Jack, giving a sample of just how freakishly strong he is, worry that he might be alive because they Never Found the Body — and he is, injured, but alive and more than furious that the newspapers wrote him off.
- The Big Mom Pirates make this assumption of the Sanji Retrieval Team during a meeting, due to a combination of unaware facts and Opera lying about Jimbei freeing Luffy and Nami to avoid punishment. Because of this, the Straw Hats were able to be successful Wedding Smashers.
- The Nine Red Scabbards, once the retainers of the Kozuki Clan, disappeared 20 years ago after Oden's execution. While their circumstances differed from person to person, in the present they are mostly assumed to be dead, with a few of them having empty graves in their memory. Only Orochi remains firm in his conviction that they might still be alive, and the fear that they might come for him one day consumes him. He's right to be paranoid, as not only are all nine of the Scabbards still alive, they are secretly preparing to finish what Oden started 20 years ago.
- Kozuki Sukiyaki is assumed by everyone to have been killed by Orochi while Oden was travelling abroad. He turns up twenty years later in the present, having concealed his identity as Tenguyama Hitetsu after escaping imprisonment and becoming filled with shame at being unable to stop Orochi from bringing Wano to ruin and executing Oden. His grandchildren are overwhelmed at learning that they still have living family, though most of Oden's former retainers were able to guess his identity (with the exception of Kin'emon, of course).
- The Five Elders are quick to assume that Sabo, who by sheer coincidence happens to be at the Lulusia Kingdom mere minutes before they use an Ancient Weapon to destroy it, couldn't possibly have survived. And normally they would be right... were it not for the fact that Sabo's ship was already a fair distance away from Lulusia — he had rigged his Transponder Snail's signal to make it look like he was still there as a precaution.
- Plica: When a heartbroken Plica goes to her crush Misa's wedding, she speaks at the podium of her apparent "death"... and promptly gets dragged off the stage by a furious Misa herself.
- Tailenders: The mysterious Loser King is believed to be long dead ever since his mysterious disappearance during a race to reach the Terraformer on the Indian continent over a century ago. When the main characters undertake the same perilous race he did, they discover as they approach the Terraformer that the Loser King never died or disappeared, instead he is still racing to reach the end. As it turns out, there is some severe Time Dilation going on near the Terraformer and only minutes had passed from the Loser King's perspective. Additionally, Tomoe is revealed to have known the truth of the situation as she raced alongside him over a century ago and was desperate to reach him again after he sent her away when he realized what was going on. In the end, this trope occurs to Tomoe as well as The Rival racer Goodspeed when they are forced to return due to having been in the Terraformers presence with another century having passed in the short time they spent there and were similarly presumed dead.
- Tekken: Blood Vengeance: Heihachi Mishima is not as dead as most people think. He shows up for the three-way brawl between himself, his son, and grandson.
Heihachi: It feels good to be back. Hiding in the shadows after faking your own death is a bore. In fact, it's downright tedious.
Kazuya: I thought I've thrown you into the depths of Hell.
Heihachi: Ha! If you thought that was enough to kill me, you are gravely mistaken.
- The Bayeux Tapestry: At one point at the Battle of Hastings, William raises his helmet to reveal his face, to reassure his army that he is still alive before their decisive final charge.
- Big Finish Doctor Who: In "The Jupiter Conjunction", Nyssa is trapped inside collapsing a base on a comet. She's teleported to safety, but nobody else knows this, assuming she's dead. Tegan is about to tell the Doctor about Nyssa's family, something she's promised to keep secret, when Nyssa arrives in the TARDIS.
- Torchwood (BBC Audio): Whilst on a trip to Cotter Paluni's World in "Red Skies", Jack has a vision of Gwen being killed, and returns to Earth to avenge her death. The next audio, "Mr. Invincible", reveals that Gwen was actually still alive all along, and what Jack had seen was a premonition, with the play instead being dedicated to Jack saving her from her fate.
- Aquaman: In Aquaman (1991) Vulko's apparent offscreen death in Aquaman (1989) is revealed to have been a lie designed to lower morale, and he shows up alive and well.
- Batman:
- In The Many Deaths of the Batman, the first issue deals with what appears to be the actual death of Batman, though at the end of the issue, we see the person under the mask isn't Bruce Wayne and another figure in a Batman costume is killed by explosion. The second issue reveals that the real Batman was in Paris the entire time and had no idea anything was happening.
- Batman: Black and White: In "A Black and White World" (a short story in which all the characters are actually Animated Actors), the Joker's latest scheme involves having Batman buried in the cement foundations of a new comedy club. Batman is able to escape because Joker forgot that it's Memorial Day, so the construction won't start until tomorrow, which gave him plenty of time to get out of the death trap. Batman says the trope with some Punctuated Pounding for emphasis; while rehearsing the script, Joker calls out the line as incredibly hokey.
- DuckTales: In "Double Indemnity", Magica's clone of Launchpad forces the boys and Scrooge out of the plane into a sandstorm, and then Magica starts a camel stampede to get them trampled. They survive and Scrooge quickly gets back to declare that the assassination attempts failed.
- Lady Luck: A Nazi agent named Miss Tinker impersonates Brenda Banks and is later killed, with Brenda's death reported in the news. The real Brenda Banks, a.k.a. Lady Luck, allows everyone except her manservant Piccolo to believe she's dead for at least several issues so she can fight crime uninterrupted, before finally returning to her grief-stricken family explaining she was "convinced" by Lady Luck to go into hiding so Miss Tinker's employers wouldn't go after her to finish the job.
- Marvel 100th Anniversary Special: Vance Astro (actually Peter Quill a.k.a. Star-Lord), quotes the line after unmasking himself.
- Robin (1993): When Tim Drake detached his cape fleeing from a mass of Arkham escapees it was found wrapped around skeletal remains and he was presumed dead. His death was reported to all the Bats, only for Tim to almost instantaneously arrive at Barbara Gordon's tower and let her and Blue Beetle know he'd survived. Unfortunately they were unable to tell Nightwing until after The Joker had gloated about killing two of his little brothers and Dick had beaten him to death for it.
- Jughead The Hunger: Quoted near verbatim by Reggie over the phone, freshly turned werewolf after being assumed dead and trying to coax Veronica into letting him inside.
- Spider Queen: The Noose murders a woman and leaves a note saying she’s Spider Queen. As the hero’s identity is secret, only she has particular reason to doubt the claim.
- Superman:
- The Living Legends of Superman: Doble subversion. Superman abruptly stops appearing in the early 21st centuy. An old man called Homer claims he met Superman around the year 2,068, and upon stammering that Superman was presumed dead, the Man of Steel jokes he got better. However, it is soon revealed that Homer made up that story altogether. However, it is later revealed that Superman disappeared because he got entrapped by a cosmic anomaly and flung into the distant future.
- In Red Daughter of Krypton, the Red Lanterns believe Supergirl has been killed when her Ring goes offline (a sure sign that a Red Ring-bearer is dead). They spend several issues believing Kara is dead until Guy Gardner bumps into her during the "Atrocities" arc, whereupon he gives her a hug and asks how she survived. Kara proceeds to explain her heart was restarted with a literal sunbath when her Ring was removed.
- Brainiac's Blitz: Brainiac traps Supergirl in a Kryptonite cage which he proceeds to blast into oblivion. Believing her dead, Brainiac prepares to retreat back to his asteroid base when Supergirl bursts through his ship's hull, telling him to not write her obituary yet. She was able to slip out of the cage just in time.
- "Supergirl's Big Brother": Subverted. When a man shows up on the Danvers' doorstep, claiming to be their son Jan, Fred and Edna state that Jan was reported killed in combat several years ago. The man claims the reports of his death were a mistake caused by a mix-up in the records, but later it is revealed that he is a fraud impersonating the real Jan Danvers, who is indeed dead and buried.
- Computo the Conqueror: When the Legion engages the titular villain, Triplicate Girl splits herself into three bodies. Two of them are able to flee, but the third is caught and disintegrated by Computo. The Legionnaires assume that their teammate is dead and are holding her funeral, when Triplicate Girl's remaining bodies walk into the place and ask why they are talking about her "death".
- In Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes #197, Timber Wolf, who had apparenly caught in the radius of a planetoid's explosion and reported as killed in action, reappears six months later after his "death", as no memory of the last six months (later it was revealed that he was abducted and brain-washed by a villain called Tyr).
Superboy: "Bin—?! Brin Londo! All of us thought you were dead!"
Timber Wolf: "As your 20th Century saying goes... "The reports of my death were greatly exaggerated!" - In Superman: The Doomsday Wars, a suddenly speaking Doomsday gloats that "The rumors of my stupidity were greatly exaggerated". Both Doomsday and the person actually riding him, Brainiac were thought dead by this point (Doomsday was presumed dead at the end of Superman/Doomsday: Hunter/Prey and Brainiac was seemingly killed at the start of Doomsday Wars.)
- Ultimate X-Men (2001): During Ultimatum, Wolverine thought he killed the true James Madrox. Later it was revealed that it was yet another dupe.
- Wonder Woman: In The Legend of Wonder Woman (2016), Steve Trevor has been turned into a media pony by the military after his return from what was thought to have been his death at sea. He's not very fond of all the attention, or the fact that he's basically grounded for the duration of the media circus he's being put through.
- Adventures of a Line Hopper: Following Line Hopper where Seo mistakes Elizabeth for Buffy and leaves behind the actual Buffy in Elizabeth's timeline where its version of Xander has set up a bomb to blow everybody up, when she actually has escaped to a hell dimension at the last moment is assumed to be dead for most of the next season until she comes back in the finale. This also furthers the Doctor's wrong assumption that she dies for good in 2001 since the reported circumstances are similar.
- Fairies of the Shattered Moon: General Ironwood nearly says this word-for-word when he shows up at the Atlesian Council after the Schnee Manor exploded, which killed Jacques, Willow, and Klein, and put him in critical condition, claiming that he used the event in question to briefly fake his own death to throw off the enemy. As it turns out though, he actually did die from his injuries, but Watts revived him with his Necromancy Curse and used him to launch a coup on the Council with the Ace Ops and Specialists to discredit the military. The moment his use is done, Watts cuts off his control and lets Ironwood drop like a sack of bricks dead.
- If Wishes Were Ponies...: After getting beaten up by Dudley during a game of Harry Hunting and left in the forest near the Playpark in Little Whinging, Harry accidentally stumbles through a portal leading to Equestria, where he spends a year living a happier and healthy life in Ponyville with the Mane Six and his friends the CMC. Returning to Earth after learning about the existence of Hogwarts (and to set up an Embassy site by buying up all of the properties around the playpark), Harry Potter and the CMC encounter Dudley and his gang. note
Dudley: I thought you'd died when you disappeared so sudden like.
Harry: Any report of my death was an exaggeration. - The Night Unfurls: Kyril quotes the trope's title while addressing the noble class at Ken to dispel the rumours of his "death" due to an attempted assassination.
I assure you, ladies and gentlemen, the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.
- The Omnitrix Hero: Flash Sentry is seemingly killed by a bomber when one of his bombs destroys Canterlot City Mall and Flash vanishes. Adding to it, when everyone thinks he's dead, Twilight seems to be haunted by what seems to be his ghost as she mourns him. It is eventually revealed though that Flash isn't dead but is stuck in a Partial Transformation that has made him invisible and intangible to the world around him. After this is fixed, the town is greatly relived to see he's alive, especially his parents.
- Origin Story: When the Black Panther tells Alex that he thought she had died, she actually quotes the trope's title at him and cites Mark Twain. In response, he relates to her the truth that Twain never actually said it.
- To the New World: Between the rumors of Gwyndolin being fed to Aldrich and his well-known devotion to preserving his father's legacy, many non-Irithyllians mistakenly believe him to be dead once the Age of Dark begins. This is why Gwynevere still hasn't sought him out when the sequel starts.
- Transformers: MHA: Both Sky-Byte and Jetfire are thought to be dead after they're last seen fighting each other near an exploding supernova. It surprises both the Autobots and the Decepticons to see both of them still kicking when they arrive on Earth.
- All Assorted Animorphs AUs:
- In "What if Elfangor and Loren raised Tobias?", the official story is that Arbron, Elfangor, and Alloran all died on their mission to the Taxxon planet... even though every Andalite knows that Alloran was alive and unwell as Visser Three's host for years afterwards.
- In "What if they saved Jake's family?", when Marco mentions his mom, Jean points out that she's been dead for five years. Marco then retorts that he's been "dead" for three months.
- Eleutherophobia:
- It's mentioned a few times in the series that everyone assumed Tom died after he fell out of the Blade Ship at first.
- In THX 1138, Tom is surprised to meet Collette because he thought all the Auxiliary Animorphs were dead. Sol said on Tumblr
that she decided to resurrect her because it's only implied that she died in canon.
- In How I Live Now, Rachel is shocked to learn that everyone on Earth thinks she's dead.
- In Sam & Mickey's videos, Barbie's mother, Margaret, has a tendency to announce that Barbie's Aunt Millicent passed away, only for Millicent to appear alive and well afterwards.
Aunt Millicent: I'm not dead, Margaret!
Margaret: You're dead to me!
- Bandit's Belt: When Trixie wounds Bingo and sends her to the hospital, Dougie thinks she’s dead.
- Bridge to Terabithia 2: The Last Time: It's an LDD-fanfic. The first chapter literally ends with Jess' father, Jack Aarons, telling him "Leslie is alive" (doubles as an Ironic Echo, since in the novel and movie the fanfic is based from, Jack is the one who tells Jess of Leslie's death). It turns out Leslie's death is retconned to a Never Found the Body situation, where during her solo trip to Terabithia, she was actually abducted by an enemy of the Burke family and assumed dead. Unfortunately, by the time she made it back to Lark Creek, it's been 5 years...
- A Student Out of Time: After the beginning of The Tragedy, former Hope's Peak student Umeko Hayase, Class 75's Ultimate Quantum Physicist, disappeared. She dropped off the face of the Earth and many, from Future Foundation to the former Remnants of Despair, believed she'd died. As it turns out, she simply went into hiding after being severely injured by a grenade attack, and was invested in a time travel experiment which would kickstart the events of the story.
- All You Need Is Love: L isn't dead but the computer thinks he is.
- Twice Upon an Age: Varric, in the side volume Across the Waking Sea, has to send a letter of this sort to Bethany Hawke following a specific Dragon Age: Inquisition plot point. He knows that she has good reason to believe he could be dead (since her last letter was returned undeliverable), so as soon as he's able, he makes sure to let her know that he's safe.
- The Forgotten Past of The Earthling Saiyan:
- Kakarot (and by proxy the other Saiyans) thought Korin died during their attack against Earth in Book 1, since Kakarot kicked him off the lookout and he supposedly plummeted to his death. Korin was actually left alive and unharmed since he's able to fly.
- Turles was thought to have died as a young child after having snuck off to another planet. This turns out to be false when he shows up on Earth in a spaceship crash. Because he had ended up as a space pirate, he'd also survived the destruction of Planet Vegeta.
- Lost and Found
: This goes double when a serial killer abducts John and shoots Roy. Roy survives, but John's captor tells John he died, and Roy and the others can only fear the worst for John.
- Missing Family
has a similar thing where Roy's plane crashes and everyone but John are sure he's dead.
- Everyone but Roy thinks John is dead in A Season for Miracles
.
- Missing Family
- Sojourn Into Silence
has everyone thinking Roy died in a helicopter crash—until he's found alive 18 days later in a ravine.
- Fire Emblem: Three Houses: Fifth Path: One of the several things that sets the plot in motion is that Sothis didn't actually die when she fused with Byleth like she said she would. When Byleth finds out she is greatly peeved about it and the two get in a shouting match.
- Abraxas (Hrodvitnon):
- Although Dr. Vivienne Graham was brought Back from the Dead in a Kaiju body by Ghidorah's severed head shortly after her canon death, Monarch and the outside world still believes her to be dead until about a year has passed while she's held captive in Alan Jonah's new base.
- Mariko, a character from the Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) novelization who was responsible for setting Behemoth loose, is officially listed as deceased but she actually survived the destruction (though not without scars) and went off the grid.
- Sleeping Like The Dead
: Aziraphale and Crowley take a nap that lasts several months. Since Aziraphale's neighbors assume that he's in his seventies or eighties, they think he died and hold a memorial for him. When Aziraphale and Crowley wake up, Aziraphale claims he was on a business trip in Italy.
- Draco might not be a Weasley by blood, but he's family: Narcissa was reported as dead sixteen years before the start of the story, not long after Draco's birth. However, she was not dead, she'd fled the country and had been living on the run for that time. It's unclear if she had actually faked her death or if it was only assumed since she'd disappeared.
- Unlinked: Amelia gets electrocuted in the opening chapter and is clinically dead for several minutes before being revived. However, that was enough time for the train to assume she was dead for good, removing her number and putting her tape in storage. When Amelia appears in front of One-One, the robot refuses to believe she's alive, getting caught in a loop until deciding that she's obviously a clone like Hazel.
- Invaders of Irk:
- When a Sapphire Legion member shows up to try and recruit El and Larb to the rebellion, El expresses shock at his presence, as the Legion was thought to have been wiped out following their failed coup against Tallest Spork. In response, the Legion member cites this trope with a laugh.
- As revealed later in the series, neither Tallest Miyuki nor Tallest Spork were actually killed by Zim's blob. Miyuki was warned that it would try to kill her but Zim would die if she tried to avoid it, so decided to fake her death via letting it happen and transferring her mind to a clone body, only for something to go wrong and leave her in a coma for years until the Irken Resistance found her. Meanwhile, Spork survived the attack on him but was horribly maimed, requiring cybernetic reconstruction; the High Council, sick of his leadership, made sure these were subpar enough that he can't leave the isolated facility that they tucked him away in, leaving the rest of the universe oblivious to his survival.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
- JUST THE BEST MARY SUE, EVER!: Used as a Running Gag, when Dorian Gray returns to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Almost every single member of the team utters some variation of "I thought you were dead," to which he replies, "I get that a lot."
- Reparations
: Inverted. Tamsin and Bo were devastated when Lauren (and her friend Dan) was listed as a casualty of a hurricane. Not only are both alive, they were completely unaware of they had been declared dead in the first place.
Tamsin: Yo Doc, this is either the night of the undead, or news of your demise were grossly, and I mean very grossly, exaggerated.
Lauren: (confused) There were reports of my demise?
- Sixes and Sevens starts with Michael Carter's death being faked. The description of the fic on AO3 even references this quote.
- The Miracle at Palaven: Patrus Castellus goes to Captain Ixius' family to inform them that, after 3 years of being MIA, she was officially being designated as KIA. To his immense surprise, he found her at home with her husband and children.
- The fanfic Saying Goodbye
posits that during the events of "The Late Captain Pierce" (see below under "Live-Action TV"), Hawkeye's former roommate Trapper was also erroneously notified of his death, having finally mailed out a long-overdue letter to Hawkeye right as the latter was being mistakenly declared dead, leading to the letter being returned to sender with a stamp indicating the person he was trying to reach is dead. He doesn't find out the truth until several years later in the sequel
, when a Contrived Coincidence brings him to Hawkeye's hometown where, much to his astonishment, he encounters a very much alive and well Hawkeye.
- Naru-Hina Chronicles: After Naruto reveals to Hideki that he's the son of Minato Namikaze, Hideki says that Minato's child was reported to have died the day of the Kyubi attack. Naruto replies with this trope.
- Son of the Sannin: Unlike in canon, Madara Uchiha doesn't actually die, just remains on life support until he enters a resurrection cocoon to restore himself to his prime (and then some). However, he does allow the world at large to believe him dead so as to lay low and prepare his return from the shadows.
- Walk on the Moon: Rei was gone for two weeks when she performed the reverse summoning jutsu. Jounin who are gone for a few days are written off as dead, and Rei was only an academy student at the time. Considering how devastated her family was and the fact that her disappearance coincided with the Uchiha massacre, it is a very serious matter.
- your move, instigator (draw your weapon and hold your tongue): Tenten tells Sakura and Kiba about how one of the kids at her orphanage had Big Ol' Eyebrows, sobering when she mentions how he was taken away and recruited to be a Child Soldier just like her and everybody else there. She assumes that he was killed in battle like all the rest. However, it's eventually revealed that his inability to use chakra kept him off the frontlines, and he was found and adopted by Gai, culminating in the two being reunited years later.
- No More Miracles and Magic
is about Homura ending up in a timeline where Magical Girls and seemingly the Incubators don't exist. Because Mami Tomoe became a magical girl when she wished to survive a car accident, Homura (and by extension the audience) believe that Mami is dead, seemingly affirmed when Homura finds a different girl in Mami's class. However, when Homura goes to the outskirt of town to stock up on gunpowder for potential threats, she finds Mami at the counter of one store, albeit in a clearly miserable position.
- Coeur Al'Aran:
- Knight of Salem: The entire plot of the fic kick-started because Ozpin came down with a viral outbreak and had to isolate himself, and the press leapt on the assumption that he'd quietly died. This started a chain of events wherein Tyrian kidnapped Jaune on the latter's way to Beacon, presuming him to be Ozpin's new host, and Salem ended up somehow getting reverted to a human state when she attempted to kill Jaune.
- White Sheep: Although Pyrrha is Spared by the Adaptation, she still gets presumed KIA during the attack on Beacon by the world at large, and initially by her friends, due to Cinder reluctantly kidnapping Pyrrha to meet Salem, leaving behind a significant amount of Pyrrha's blood on top of Beacon's tower. Jaune clears up the misunderstanding with his friends the following day, while the rest of the world takes a while longer to find out Pyrrha is alive.
- RWBY: Scars:
- Pyrrha has been presumed dead by some people outside of Vale after the fall of Beacon and the global communications breakdown, her own mother among those people. She even finds a bronze statue commemorating her has been built in Argus, which she has mixed feelings about.
- After Cinder's defeat against Raven at the Haven vault, Cinder remains presumed dead by not just the heroes but also seemingly by the rest of Salem's faction in this AU throughout the fic's Volume 6-adjacent events.
- Star Wars: The One Canon:
- Chewbacca’s death in Vector Prime is retconned to allow for his survival in the time of the Sequel Trilogy without disrupting the events of the New Jedi Order and later elements of Legends. Instead of dying in Sernpidal, Chewbacca is sent through a portal by the Force Demon Wutzek, (whom Chewbacca encountered in the UK Star Wars (Marvel 1977) ), into exile on Tython just before Sernpidal is destroyed. He is recovered by his nephew Lowbacca and reunites with Han just after the events of the novel Star Wars: Crucible.
- Yaddle’s death in Tales of the Jedi is retconned as a near death experience to reconcile her death in the Jedi Quest Novels. Her memories are wiped by the Sith and her barely living body is left for the Jedi Council to find as a means to taunt the Jedi and pay them back for Darth Maul’s death.
- Thrawn is exiled to Peridea after the Battle of Lothal, as depicted in Star Wars Rebels, and utilizes Nightsister magicks to manipulate and control a clone of himself, through which he masterminds the events of the Thrawn Trilogy from afar before said clone is killed at the Battle of Bilbringi. Thrawn then takes advantage of his clone’s death to plan his secret return from exile back to the galaxy.
- Wolfblood: Aiden's body was washed downriver after he died during a hunt with Jad, and Jad did not retrieve it but returned with Aiden's sword and news of his demise. Aiden turns up alive years later, and Jad turns out to have been lying quite a bit about the encounter that supposedly killed him.
- Here Comes the New Boss: Endbringer armbands will report the death of their wearer if they don't detect life signs, but there can be false positives if, for example, the arm was cut off. Elpis was briefly reported dead when she lost an arm to Abattoir's teleporter, but Armsmaster calls in her survival. Aegis' death was reported when he lost everything except his head, but he can actually survive that.
- Aladdin (1992, Disney): When the Cave of Wonders collapses while Aladdin is inside it, Jafar naturally assumes that he is either dead or trapped forever. It isn't until the final act that he learns that Prince Ali, who has been a thorn in his side for some time, is Aladdin. Much to Jafar's delight, he also has the lamp, which Jafar had believed was lost forever when the cave collapsed.
- In An American Tail, this is what Fievel's family believes after he falls off the boat to America. With the exception of his sister, Tania, they don't even want to entertain the idea that he might be alive. Even worse, they keep missing each other due to random chances.
- Batman: Bad Blood. Colonel Kane is told by his daughter, who witnessed Batman apparently die in a huge explosion, that No-One Could Have Survived That. Just then the Batmobile roars past and he jokingly gives this trope. Turns out it's Nightwing doing an Emergency Impersonation of Batman so Gotham's underworld won't realise he's gone. Of course, Batman turns out to be alive anyway having been held prisoner by Talia al Ghul.
- Blue Mountain Mystery: Luke is hiding due to supposedly knocking a yellow engine off the barge and leaving him to drown; that engine is revealed to be Victor, who was saved and repainted afterward.
- The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie: The film climaxes with Daffy, Porky, and Petunia Pig destroying an asteroid which threatens to strike Earth. Daffy and Porky don't make it off in time, leading everyone else to assume they're dead. Dramatically, they prove they aren't, plummeting to the surface while stuck to a massive crystal. The force of the explosion was enough to bring them home.
- In Finding Nemo, Marlin spots Nemo seemingly lying unconscious and belly-up in the dentist's chair, thinking he died and will never see him again. Unknown to him though, Nemo was only ''pretending'' to be dead so the dentist won't give him to Darla.
- Hercules (1997): For the first half of the movie, Hades believes that Herc had been killed as a baby, due to Pain and Panic lying about it, leaving him to believe that nothing could stand in the way of his plan to take over Mt. Olympus. It's at about the halfway point that Hades learns from Meg's information that Hercules is in fact still alive. Needless to say, he is more than a little upset with Pain and Panic.
Hades: So you "took care of him", huh? "Dead as a doornail". Weren't those your EXACT words?!
- At the beginning of The Land Before Time, Sharptooth fell down into a ravine during the earthquake that split the land, leading Littlefoot to believe he was dead. When Cera rejoins him and the others to mention she encountered Sharptooth and learned he was alive, Littlefoot believed she was lying, constantly telling the others that there wasn't any Sharptooth. It's not until later on that he finds out that Cera was telling the truth... when Sharptooth attacks them and they are forced to run for their lives. "Now, will you believe me?" she angrily asks him.
- In The Lion King (1994), after going into Self-Imposed Exile over thinking he was responsible for Mufasa's death (he thought his roaring frightened a herd of wildebeests into the gorge when really, the hyenas chased them there and Scar killed Mufasa himself), everyone in the Pride Lands believes that Simba is dead. Even Scar assumes this, as the hyenas didn't tell him he got away from them. When he returns to take back the Pride Lands, everyone (barring Nala, who had already found out he was alive) at first thinks he is Mufasa's ghost.
- In Megamind, Metro Man goes so far as to fake his death before retiring to live alone. He makes a return for the finale in a spiritual sense, as it's actually Megamind using a hologram disguise, and quotes the trope name almost word-for-word:
Metro Man: My death was... greatly exaggerated.
- Scooby-Doo! in Where's My Mummy?: Velma is helping an archaeology team restore the great Sphinx. There seems to be a legend that Cleopatra's ghost guards the treasures within, and, when Scooby and the rest of the gang join her, Velma gets separated and is turned to stone. It turns out after the perps (a treasure plunderer and her crew) are pinched that it is revealed that Velma faked her death and was the ghost of Cleopatra all along to ward off plunderers.
- In Wendell & Wild Father Level Bests nearly says the exact name of this trope to perfection when he announces "Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated!" upon returning from the dead much to most people's shock.
- 7th Heaven: Chico comes home from World War I just as his wife Diane is being told he was killed. As they embrace, he says that they said he was dead, but he'll never die.
- Are You Being Served?: Captain Peacock briefly believes Mr. Lucas is dead when he sees a cabinet he was hiding in get riddled with bullet holes, but his distress quickly goes away when Mr. Lucas emerges unharmed from the other side.
- Avengers: Endgame: Scott Lang (a.k.a. Ant-Man) is falsely assumed to have been one of the many victims of Thanos's Snap. Instead, he was in the Quantum Realm, and the only three people who knew he was there and knew how to get him out were actual victims of the Snap, as seen in the mid-credits scene
of Ant-Man and the Wasp. He finally escapes from the Quantum Realm in Endgame, but five years have passed in the real world while only five hours passed from his perspective. This leads to an emotional scene where he reunites with his now-teenage daughter Cassie, who assumed he had died. Later, he and the remaining Avengers exploit the Timey-Wimey Ball rules of the quantum realm to go back in time and steal Infinity Stones to create a new gauntlet to bring everyone back.
- Batman Begins: Bruce Wayne goes on a multi-year incognito journey to find himself, and when he gets back Alfred tells him he's been thought dead. It's mostly played as a throwaway joke, though, and is sorted out between scenes with no lasting complications. Alfred mentions that there have been moves to have him declared legally dead, and Bruce says it's a good thing he left everything to Alfred then.
- Beat the Devil: Peterson and Dannreuther are pushing a broken-down car along a mountain road when it gets away from them and careens off a cliff into the sea. They are reported as dead, which surprises them when they return. Besides being funny, this is plot-relevant: Harry finds out about the uranium scheme when Rovello, believing his partner to be dead, approaches Harry and tries to get him to join.
- Big Jake: Big Jake hears everyone he meets tell him that they thought he had died. Eventually, Big Jake gets so annoyed, he promises to kill the next person to say it to him — who, of course, turns out to be the Big Bad...
- A Bridge Too Far. Urquhart's paratroopers are quite astonished when the General turns up alive, having been holed up in a Dutch house for several days. Unfortunately, things have gotten even worse since he was away.
- Buddha's Palm: The ancient Firecloud Devil, which was once The Dreaded in the Martial World, is assumed to be dead. But early in the film, after the hero Long Jian-fei botches his suicide attempt, he ends up in a cave and encounters the Firecloud Devil, who had been living as a hermit ever since his supposed death decades ago. It was here he decides to pass his knowledge in the titular Buddha's Palm to Long.
- Cast Away: Chuck Noland is declared dead after being stranded on a deserted island for years. They even held a funeral for him.
Chuck Noland: You had a coffin? What was in it?
- Casablanca: Victor Laszlo was rumored dead five times, and wryly quips that, why, it was true every single time.
- The Comedy of Terrors, having suffered from catalepsy all of his life, Trumbull and Gillie would frequently believe Lord Black to be dead, only for him to wake up much later, usually telegraphed to the audience by his nose twitching and asking "what place is this?"
- Deep Impact: The initial announcement about the Wolf-Biederman comet states that both Dr. Wolf and Leo Biederman died in a car accident before they could share their discovery of the comet with anyone. In reality, only Dr. Wolf was in the car when it crashed. Leo Biederman and his family, watching the speech at home, are bemused to hear that he's supposedly "dead". During an assembly at his school, Leo theorises that because Dr. Wolf put both of their names in his notes the investigators assumed Leo had died with him.
- Escape from New York: When meeting Snake Plissken, characters repeatedly make comments along the lines of "I thought you were dead!" Later, Plissken mutters to the girl in the coffee store "I am dead."
- Fury (1936): Exploited by the hero. Joe is presumed dead but actually escaped the fire and explosion at the jailhouse which was brought on by an angry mob. He then stays in hiding to watch the townspeople get sentenced to death for his murder.
- The Jungle Book: Mowgli's Story: Shere Khan is shot and presumed dead early in the film. When he returns later, he reveals that he was merely Shot in the Ass.
- Kingsman: The Golden Circle: Word for word, this trope is the tagline, confirming that Harry Hart is somehow still alive.
- Love Me Tender: Vance's family thought he died at war and are conflicted when he comes back home unscathed, since his fiancee married his brother Clint in the meanwhile.
- Diego, the original Zorro from The Mask of Zorro, had not been seen in 20 years. Everyone assumed that he died but he was just in prison.
- My Favorite Wife: Ellen Arden returns after being shipwrecked on a Deserted Island for seven years. When she returns, her children (who do not recognize her) tell her about how their mother was drowned and mention that they put flowers on her grave every Easter. Her mother also tells her that her funeral was "Lovely—Dr. Blake preached a wonderful sermon."
- Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides: Jack Sparrow relates the (Real Life) myth of how the body of Blackbeard swam three times around a navy vessel after it'd been decapitated. As he relates this story to Blackbeard, who's alive and intact, this trope presumably applies within the PotC Verse.
- Saint Laurent portrays a real incident when it was announced on the radio that the famous designer had died. He was busy working on his next collection and refused to be interviewed, but his partner Pierre brought a group of reporters into his atelier to confirm he was, in fact, still alive.
- Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024): Team Sonic is rather surprised to learn that Dr. Robotnik is still alive after it seemed he died in the battle against Sonic in the previous movie. Robotnik's minion, Agent Stone, only handwaves it away by showing to them it isn't true.
- Star Trek: First Contact: When he returns to the bridge, Picard paraphrases the trope name as "Reports of my assimilation were greatly exaggerated."
- Starship Troopers: Johnny Rico's friends bring him a copy of his own death certificate, while he's still in the hospital recovering from his wounds. They all have a big laugh over it, except for Rico's Love Interest, who doesn't know the report was incorrect. Later on, her Jerkass boyfriend discovers Rico is still alive, and immediately informs the Love Interest.
- Sullivan's Travels: The famous director Sullivan is believed to have been run over by a train and killed. It was actually a bum wearing Sullivan's shoes. He's actually in jail, but no one knows he's not dead until he finds a way to escape and make his existence public.
- Too Many Husbands: Bill Cardew was declared Legally Dead after a boating accident, but he was actually stuck on a Deserted Island for a year. Meanwhile, his wife marries his business partner and best friend, leading to some awkwardness when Bill returns.
- Vanilla Sky: Following the car crash, Tom Cruise's character at one point mildly jokes that "The rumors of my death have been mildly exaggerated."
- Gallagher opened the morning newspaper and was dumbfounded to read in the obituary column that he had died. He quickly phoned his best friend, Finney. 'Did you see the paper?' asked Gallagher. 'They say I died!!' 'Yes, I saw it!' replied Finney. 'Where are ye callin' from?'
- Gabriel Iglesias talks in one of his specials about having been subjected to a fake death announcement, and how he read an article about himself that actually made him tear up a little because "I was so nice!" Mostly, though, he was miffed because the only one to see the report and actually think to check on him was his friend Martin, "and I think he just wanted to make sure he still had a job." Gabriel describes their conversation thus:
Martin: Hey. You dead?
Gabriel: (confused) No.
Martin: I figured. You'd have texted me.
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: Tom and Huck are mistakenly thought dead until they show up at their own funeral.
- Animorphs: One book sees a new alien race that according to Ax was killed off millennia ago. "Reports of their extinction may have been exaggerated" indeed, they're trying to kill us right now.
- Armor, by John Steakley: The protagonist is the only survivor of a military unit that gets wiped out. The confusion of circumstances results in parts of the computerized record-keeping system thinking he's also dead, while other parts are aware he's alive; this, to put it mildly, does not make his life any easier.
- BattleTech Expanded Universe: Blood Legacy features the specific Twain quote sent cryptically by Precentor Martial Anastasius Focht to mercenary commander Morgan Kell, early into the Clan invasion. Because of the interference of the Primus of Comstar, this is the only way he can try to inform the grieving Kell family that the son they thought killed early in the invasion is actually alive, captured by the Clans. It also serves as a very subtle hint that Focht is not all he's cracked up to be either. He's actually Frederick Steiner, who was also presumed dead over a decade by that point.
- Ben and Me: Ben accidentally convinces some locals that he's drowned when he runs off chasing a dog that had stolen his cap, leaving his clothes on the banks.
- Catch-22: Doc Daneeka is listed as dead because he was on the flight roster for a bomber that flew into a mountain. The fact that he was standing there in person, telling them he wasn't dead, failed to convince the army bureaucracy.
- The Cat Who... Series: In book #11 (The Cat Who Lived High), the vacationing Qwill's car is stolen and the driver turns up dead. The local law enforcement where the car is found, who don't know Qwill, assume the dead man is the owner of the car and issue an incorrect report. While most of Moose County is thrown into deep mourning, Arch goes to where Qwill is staying to get the cats — and almost has a heart attack when he finds Qwill alive and sort of well, having just fought off an attempt on his life
- Ciaphas Cain: A footnote in one of the books notes that Cain was listed as "killed in action" and then showed up alive (and typically saving the day) so many times that the Munitorum finally gave up trying to keep track and kept him on the payroll regardless — even long past his confirmed death and burial with full military honors.
- The Conformist: Near the end, Marcello discovers that Lino, the man he shot as a child after he attempted to molest Marcello, is still alive and that the obituary he read in the paper shortly after the event was erroneous.
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time: Christopher's father told him his mother died. Then Christopher finds all the letters she's been writing to him since she left his father.
- Enoch Arden: The titular character returns after being shipwrecked for more than ten years to find his wife has married another man.
- First Law: Nicoma Cosca has this happen many times over the course of his life, and declares it "wishful thinking on the part of my enemies."
- Grent's Fall: While his army may have been scattered before the story started, the Bladecleaver survived unharmed.
- Harry Bosch is surprised in Two Kinds of Truth when his appeal for help in the 15-year-old Esme Tavares missing person case results in Esme Tavares contacting him. It seems that Tavares, who was presumed dead by everyone after she disappeared from her home while her infant daughter slept in a crib, had simply skipped out on a bad marriage and changed her name.
- The Hobbit, by J. R. R. Tolkien: When Bilbo Baggins finally returns to his house, he finds a huge crowd gathered for his estate auction. Since he had left without telling anyone, and not returned for a year, everyone in the Shire had assumed he was dead. His heirs, the Sackville-Bagginses, are rather disappointed when he turns up.
- A Hole in the Fence: Flammèche explains Grisón that his biological mother asked her to take care of her baby boy for some few years; but she never came back for Grisón because she died in the earthquake which shook the city of La Morlaye two years later. Later, a shepherd called Basile reveals Grisón that his mother is alive, and mystified, the boy asks why his adoptive parents lied to him. Basile replies he was not lied to: it's difficult to identify and locate all dead and missing persons in the aftermath of a catastrophe. Still later, his mother explains it was her husband who died in the earthquake.
- Honor Harrington:
- Honor says a variation on the line when she returns to Manticore in Ashes of Victory. In this case, not only has she been gone for the better part of two years, but the People's Republic of Haven actually faked footage of her execution and broadcast it throughout the galaxy. This causes a lot of complications, not least of which that her estate has been divided up according to her will. Honor is less bothered by this than by certain twenty-foot-tall memorials to her. Even the Peeps thought she had died in a failed attempt to escape. But no one was going to believe that, so they claimed to have formally executed her, to put a badass face on the debacle.note
- Roughly half a decade later, Honor's best friend Michelle Henke is seemingly killed at the Battle of Solon. Turns out she actually made it off the ship and was tucked safely away in a Havenite POW camp. When the two meet again, Michelle remarks that "now we're even for that jaunt to Cerberus you took."
- Joel Suzuki: The shaman Blackspore disappeared after the Fourfoot War and was presumed dead, until Legend of the Loudstone, when the protagonists finally find him on the atoll where he's been stranded ever since he tried to teleport to Six States but couldn't get far enough.
- Lost Voices: On Luce's thirteenth birthday, her father's fishing boat went missing in a storm. Her grief over his apparent death is part of what triggered her transformation into a mermaid following a Near-Rape Experience at the hands of her uncle a year later. But in Waking Storms, Luce finds him alive on a small island somewhere north of the Aleutians. She helps him build a raft and tows him to an inhabited island.
- The Martian: The first third or so is driven by astronaut turned reluctant Martian colonist Mark Watney's urgent need to contact Mission Control before reports of his death cease to be greatly exaggerated.
- The Mermaid Chronicles: When Cordelia was thirteen, her family was attacked by a shark (actually a shapeshifter called a selachii) who took her mother and her twin brother Dylan. She learns years later that Dylan was saved by merfolk who transformed him into one of them. In Quest for Atlantis, Cordelia and Dylan learn that their mother is also alive, and has been held prisoner in Atlantis for almost six years.
- Mermaids of Eriana Kwai: Meela's older brother Nilus was supposedly killed by mermaids when she was eight. In fact, he fell in love with the mermaid Ephyra, who transformed him into a merman so he could be with her. When Lysi meets him in Ice Crypt, he's going by Coho.
- The Neverwinter Saga: Drizzt thought Jarlaxle was dead since the end of Gauntlgrym, but he is rescued by the drow mercenary in The Last Threshold. Drizzt even runs up to hug him, while he banters about his supposed death.
- Old Mortality: Everyone thinks Henry drowned in a shipwreck. He wrote to Edith after his supposed death, but the letter never reached her.
- Reign of the Seven Spellblades: Per normal school policy, the faculty doesn't get involved in missing persons cases in the labyrinth until eight days have passed, at which point it's assumed they'll be trying to recover a body. This has led to several incidents of characters being mistakenly presumed dead:
- Kevin "The Survivor" Walker got lost down there for six months and was declared dead and his funeral held, only for him to eventually turn up later that year no worse for wear.
- Downplayed by Clifton Morgan. He told his broomsports partner and lover Diana Ashbury that he would have to take a leave of absence to conduct an experiment for his thesis work, and that if he didn't return after a certain date, she should assume he was dead. Morgan's experiment went drastically awry and forced him to spend the next two years hiding in the labyrinth Secretly Dying, allowing all concerned to assume he was already dead.
- Exploited by The Conspiracy targeting several of Kimberly's teachers: they're sometimes able to recruit students for their hits whom the school had already given up for dead, which helps to mask casualties from their attacks.
- The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie: Saladin Chamcha has trouble with red tape and getting his career back in order after being presumed dead in the plane crash.
- Sherlock Holmes: Used by Arthur Conan Doyle to implement Holmes' return. Conveniently, in the story which was originally planned to kill Holmes off for real, Watson never actually saw Holmes die, but instead found supposedly incontrovertible evidence after the fact. So his lack of observational skills was used to explain away the originally-described-as-sheer rock face as actually being climbable by Holmes, with much of the other evidence of Holmes and Moriarty's fight at the waterfall having ended in a Mutual Kill being Holmes deliberately Faking the Dead to evade and track Moriarty's second in command.
- Space Brat: In the very end of book 5, Blork and his friends return home to find out they were gone so long, everyone thought they were dead and a statue of them has been erected in their memory. Naturally, their friends are very happy to learn they're alive.
- Star Wars Legends: Corran Horn has been reported dead and turned up alive again so often (3 times in the five X-Wing novels he features in alone) that it has been joked that when he really dies, nobody will believe it and will assume he's just in hiding and will turn up again sooner or later.
- The Stormlight Archive: In Words of Radiance, Shallan is witness to Jasnah being assassinated by the Ghostbloods, and the ship they're traveling on sinks (by Shallan, trying to escape from the Ghostbloods). Shallan carries this information back to Jasnah's family, unaware that Jasnah used her Elsecalling powers to escape into Shadesmar, and her Stormlight to recover from her wounds. It took her until Oathbringer to actually get back though.
- The Sword of Saint Ferdinand: Since García has been missing for four days, rumors start flying around the Castilian camp that he has been killed in action. The whole army is already about to raid Seville to "take revenge", when García shows up, revealing he was rescuing a hostage from the enemy.
- Sylvie and Bruno, by Lewis Carroll: The Vice-Warden arranges for a false report of his brother's death.
"Is the Warden supposed to be dead?"
"Well, it's supposed so: but, mind you, I don't believe it! The evidence is very weak—mere hear-say. A wandering Jester, with a Dancing-Bear (they found their way into the Palace, one day) has been telling people he comes from Fairyland, and that the Warden died there. I wanted the Vice-Warden to question him, but, most unluckily, he and my Lady were always out walking when the Jester came round. Yes, the Warden's supposed to be dead!" And more tears trickled down the old man's cheeks. - Tarot Mysteries: Biddle was apparently shot by some mobsters they conned in a flashback in the first book but at the end of the second book it's revealed that he survived and he reappears at the shop.
- Teddy London: Referenced in book 4, All Things Under the Moon. The day before the London Detective Agency goes to face a werewolf, they get into a discussion that involves quotes on death; Paul Morcey says he prefers Mark Twain's famous quote on death and hopes to be around to say it in a few days.
- Temeraire: In Victory of Eagles, Laurence is thought dead by Temeraire after the ship he was imprisoned on is sunk by the French. A stray cannonball opened his cell, and he tried to help the crew before making it to the lifeboats with the survivors.
- Tim Dorsey: Serge, the usual protagonist, is on a quest to find out the truth about his grandfather Sergio's death after a fiasco with rare stolen diamonds. He believes his namesake is still alive and is actually quite right. The "dead man" in question even explains that no one bothered to check how deep the water was, he was actually standing up to his chest and watching the chaos unfold on the docks.
- Unofficial History by Sir William Slim: During WW2, Brigadier Slim encounters some British troops under his command fleeing an attack by Italian bombers. They earnestly inform him they are the sole survivors after their unit was wiped out, one of them adding that the brigadier is dead as well. Slim assures them that he's very much alive, then orders them back to their unit (which is still intact, just demoralized having never been in combat before).
- Wayward Children: During Antsy's two-year stint Trapped in Another World in Lost in the Moment and Found, not only was she presumed dead, her stepfather was convicted of her murder — no loss, given his pedophilic intentions towards her. Christopher remembers the news coverage of the story when she joins Eleanor West's School in Mislaid in Parts Half-Known.
- The Witch of Knightcharm is set in The Scholomance, an infamous Wizarding School known for teaching The Dark Arts. The Scholomance was supposedly destroyed by heroic witches and wizards several years before the book was set. However, as the protagonist Emily learns, reports of the school's death were exaggerated. The Scholomance survived and is still causing problems, leading Emily to embark on a quest to undermine it and end it for good.
- All in the Family: Archie Bunker is misreported as dead by the Veterans Administration for one episode.
- All My Children:
- Tad Martin was blown from a bridge. The viewer saw that he survived, but wandered off with amnesia while his loved ones mourned and didn't return until two years later, still with no memory of his past.
- Reporter/novelist Edmund Grey was believed killed when an adversary blew up his car. Grey walked into the middle of his own funeral service on his family grounds at the Wildwind estate to the shock of everyone present.
- Annika (2021): In episode 2.4, a body is found frozen in a block of ice at the bottom of the Sound of Islay, and a woman believes it's her domestic partner who absconded with half her money to return to his toxic ex, who runs an ice factory. That turns out to be a Red Herring when Harper mentions said partner's name to the employee leading her around the factory, and he identifies himself as the man they thought was in the ice block.
- As the World Turns's Jack was presumed dead in a car accident and woke up in a hospital with no memory of his past life. However, he didn't disappear—viewers actually saw scenes of him being nursed back to health interspersed with scenes of his wife and children mourning him that lasted for several months until the two ran into each other and he snapped out of it.
- Babylon 5:
- John Sheridan was thought to be dead. "I was. I got better." He spends a long time cleaning up the consequences of this.
- Earlier in the series, Sheridan exploits the fact that Mr. Morden is officially deceased to hold him prisoner without legal justification (Garibaldi calls him on it) and interrogate him about what happened to the expedition where Sheridan's wife disappeared.
- Barney Miller: Dietrich is thought to have been killed when a stress analyzer he was wearing for a scientific study flatlines. His apparent "death" is milked for a dramatic ad break cliffhanger. As it turns out the analyzer shorted out when he was hit with fire extinguisher spray.
- Blake's 7. Lampshaded at the end of "Rumours of Death", in which Avon discovers his Lost Lenore wasn't tortured to death as he believed, but was actually a Double Agent for the Secret Police.
Avon: Servalan was planning on sending you [my] corpse, but the rumours of my death—
Tarrant: —have been greatly exaggerated.
Avon: (to himself) Well, slightly exaggerated, anyway. - The Brittas Empire: Happens twice:
- In "Back from the Dead", Brittas is presumed to be dead. In reality, he had spent about a week in a chicken coop in Bulgaria, with the mix-up being because someone had stolen his possessions and were wearing them when they were flattened.
- Later on in "Gavin Featherly R.I.P", Gavin is also believed to be dead after he is lost at sea. In reality, he was captured by Ruthless Modern Pirates.
- Brotherhood: In the pilot, when one of Michael's associates said he heard he was six feet under, Michael responds, "Me? No, I was at the library...There are a lot of good books in the library."
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer: In "Doppelgangland", meeting Vamp Willow causes Angel to report that Willow is dead. He then says hi to human Willow who is standing right behind him.
- Cheers: A season 7 episode has Rebecca Howe mistaken for dead due to a mix-up with an obituary for another Rebecca Howe. Her superiors at the Lillian Corporation send a wreath to Cheers, complete with a card saying "at last her suffering is over."
- Coronation Street: Jerry's father puts his own obituary in the newspaper. He had a questionable past, and doing so was a way to make it easier for his granddaughter to join the police.
- Yoon Se-Ri from Crash Landing on You was declared dead in a hang gliding accident but really she was blown to North Korea. She escapes and returns in style at her own funeral.
- The Devil Judge: Yo-han, twice. The first time he's reported murdered in prison. The second time it's assumed he died in the courtroom explosion. Both times he survives.
- Dexter: Resurrection's release date teaser has Dexter reading a newspaper, with the front page headline being an announcement of his "death" at the end of Dexter: New Blood.
- Doctor Who: Happens on more than one occasion:
- The Series 2 two-part finale "Army of Ghosts"/"Doomsday" begins with a voiceover from Rose telling the viewer "this is the story of how I died." At the conclusion, it's revealed that she's actually alive and stuck in a parallel universe, but she's been declared legally dead in our universe.
- In the Series 5 finale "The Big Bang", the Doctor, Amy, and Rory meet a mortally wounded version of the Doctor from 12 minutes into the future and watch him die. Turns out he was only faking it to allow the trio to create a diversion for 12 minutes, allowing the future-Doctor to use those 12 minutes to wire up the Pandorica.
- Earth: Final Conflict: Jonathan Doors is shot by a sniper in the pilot, protecting the Taelon ambassador Da'an. Turns out, it was all a setup. The sniper was working for Doors and was shooting blanks, as was the doctor who confirmed his death. The goal was to set up La Résistance to figure out the real reason the Taelons came to Earth. A few episodes later, Doors publicly outs himself, using a similar line to this trope.
- Engine Sentai Go-onger: In the 10 Years Grand Prix movie, Hiroto is propelled to Junk World in an explosion (caused by BearRV crash-landing to Earth) and then can't get back, due to the new Prime Minister Noizumi putting up an "isolation barrier" which prevents access to Earth from other dimensions. Everyone else thinks Hiroto was killed in a suicide-bombing attempt to assassinate Noizumi, and when the other Go-ongers end up on Junk World and reunite with him, they initially think he's a ghost.
- Frasier: In "The Late Dr. Crane" a case of mistaken identity at a hospital leads to a news report declaring that Frasier has died, much to confusion of Frasier and his family watching at home. Frasier gets the station to run a retraction but seeing his premature eulogy prompts him to start making some changes to his life. Meanwhile, his father is getting a lot of mileage out of his friends offering their sympathies via free drinks and gift baskets.
- Fries With That?: Ben Shaw files himself as dead to get out of being beaten up. His friends quickly take advantage of this by pointing out that they don't pay dead people.
- Game of Thrones.
Lord Tywin: I see that the rumors of your demise were unfounded.
Tyrion: Sorry to disappoint you, Father. No need to leap up and embrace me, I wouldn't want you to strain yourself. - General and I:
- Chu Bei Jie is believed dead. Turns out he's alive. But Bai Ping Ting doesn't learn this until she's given a rival army information that could help them defeat him.
- Later, Bai Ping Ting is believed dead. Yang Feng and Ze Yin have a funeral and a memorial made for her. Unknown to them or Chu Bei Jie, she's still alive.
- General Hospital: Luke and Laura fake her death in an explosion in order to flee the evil Cassadines who had recently returned to town. Damian does the same thing to frame his ex-girlfriend for his supposed murder.
- The Golden Girls: In one episode, Blanche's spurned boyfriend, an obituary editor, runs her obituary to get back at her. Blanche is more upset that he claimed she was 68 than she is about being presumed dead.
- The Hamster Wheel: A regular segment involved a member of The Chaser team discovering a Twitter post reporting a public figure's death (up to and including the current Prime Minister) and airing a pre-prepared obituary. They would then retract the obituary the following week only to make the same "mistake" with someone else. However, after a few episodes they stopped bothering to preface the obituary.
- Happy!: After the Final Battle of Season 1, Nick's various injuries and a heart attack cause him to be rendered clinically dead for eight minutes before being resuscitated. This leads to rumors on the street that he actually died permanently.
- Highlander had an episode involving an Immortal who did a lot of charity work, who was shot in a mugging and died on Anne's operating table. As Anne broke the news to his followers, he came walking down the hall.
- Horrible Histories: In one sketch, as per history, a distinctly premature obituary is Alfred Nobel's inspiration for establishing his eponymous prizes (as it revealed that otherwise he would be remembered solely as the 'Merchant of Death', i.e. the inventor of dynamite). "And I will call them... Prize-amite!"
- iCarly: Spencer is thought to be dead in an episode due to a misleading newspaper article which never explains why they presumed that. It results in Spencer's artwork being worth a lot more money, which causes him to continue the illusion.
- Kaamelott: This happens a few times:
- In one of the pilot episodes, "Les Funérailles d'Ulfin", Arthur is attending the funeral of an elderly noble... only to have the "dead guy" waking up (just as the pyre is being lighted) and asking what's going on. When he makes an unfortunate comment, Arthur is very tempted to put him back in the grave.
- In Livre I, "La Mort le Roy Artu", Father Blaise endeavors to have tourists visiting Kaamelott to bring some money to the coffers. The visit of the castle ends up with... the tomb of King Arthur. Because it's solemn. Arthur is rather bothered by this; Blaise thus changes it to... visiting the tomb of Queen Guenièvre.
Lancelot: Perceval, what are you doing here?
Perceval: I'm taking the tour.
Arthur: What tour? You live here, you complete moron!
Perceval: Yeah, but they take you places I've never seen! Apparently we can visit your tomb, that's got to be worth looking at. - Episode "Always" of Livre II is all about the characters reacting (and getting all philosophical) over the report of Perceval's death. Turns out he just has been very sick and shows up at the end.
Arthur: But you're not dead, you bastard?!
- A bard once announces the funeral of King Loth. As it happens, you shouldn't listen to everything bards sing.
- Léodagan and Séli are once believed to be dead by their kingdom of Carmélide, And There Was Much Rejoicing. When Léodagan learns that it was caused by Yvain's latest poor choice of a moniker (he was going for "the Elephant of Cameliard", but got it mixed up with "Orphan"), he is not amused.
- Lancelot makes his reappearance in a rather sinister fashion
:
Guenièvre: I thought you were dead?
Lancelot: Not yet, not quite.
- Lateline: One episode has Raji really upset as the news program goes to air. He then reveals that he had just heard Buddy Hackett had died. They agree to make a quick mention on the air. When the guests respond to the quick mention by discussing their memories of Hackett, they end up turning the episode into an hour-long dedication. The next episode of the news program starts with the revelation that Hackett is still alive an apology for the mistake. (The episode of the sitcom aired in 1998, five years before Buddy Hackett died for real.)
- In Life (2007), Jude Hays is a rock star who is presumed dead but no one knows why. There are different versions of the story. Its revealed in the end that he has become a crazy homeless guy.
- Life with Lucy: When Lucy buys a computer for the store, she accidentally makes the bank think Curtis died.
- The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Adar confesses to Galadriel how and why he killed Sauron, while Sauron disguised as Halbrand, casually waits somewhere outside the barn. After being left alone with Halbrand, Adar seems to realize his great mistake of assuming that Sauron is dead, after asking Halbrand who is he and getting no answer to his question.
- M*A*S*H: In "The Late Captain Pierce", the U.S. Army mistakenly declares Hawkeye dead. The 4077th knows it's a mistake, but Hawkeye's father, who was notified in keeping with official policy, does not, and due to some exceptionally poor timing, it takes Hawkeye several days to reach him and set the record straight.
- My Family: Ben Harper gets listed in the obituary by accident.
- Max Headroom: In the pilot, Network 23 president Grossberg attempts to have Edison Carter killed to cover up the death of a viewer caused by one of Network 23's Blipverts. The episode ends with Carter storming Grossberg's office with his camera in hand, just as Grossberg has finished announcing his death.
"This is Edison Carter, coming to you very much live and direct from Network 23."
- Monarch: Legacy of Monsters:
- The 21st century storyline's plot is kicked off by the disappearance of long-lost half-siblings Cate and Kentaro's father, Hiroshi Randa, who was declared dead after his plane disappeared in a mysterious storm over Alaska. Kentaro and Cate discover that Hiroshi at least survived the plane crash when they find the wreckage and abandoned camp ruins that hold his signature pencil shavings, before the Frost Vark which is likely the reason why Hiroshi had to flee the area appears. They finally get confirmation that their dad is alive when they see him with their own eyes in the Sahara, before Godzilla appears.
- Per previously-established MonsterVerse canon, Godzilla is presumed in Dramatic Irony by the U.S. military and Monarch to have been killed after they detonate a nuclear bomb in his face at Bikini Atoll and he doesn't reappear. It isn't until a year later that Lee Shaw and Dr. Keiko find out Godzilla survived the blast none worse for wear when they see him with their own eyes.
- Murder, She Wrote: In "Who Killed J.B. Fletcher?" the Victim of the Week is a fan of Jessica's work who uses her name when engaged in her own amateur sleuthing. When she gets killed and the investigators find her fake J.B. Fletcher ID, Jessica has to juggle solving the crime, keeping an eye on the other members of the fan club in case they fo something similar, and making sure her friends and family all know she's actually fine.
- My Two Dads: One episode has a typo in an obituary causing everyone to think that Joey is dead. He goes along with it for a while to sell art, because Dead Artists Are Better.
- NCIS:
- Tony DiNozzo is presumed dead in "Bury Your Dead" when the car he was assigned for his undercover mission against La Grenouille suddenly blows up, leaving a charred corpse matching his physical details along with his personal effects. Ducky later realises during the autopsy that the corpse's lungs have mild scarring whereas Tony's would've been heavily scarred from the Y. Pestis incident. He shows up later, furious that he was almost murdered and explains that the dead guy in his car was one of La Grenouille's assistants.
- After her family farmhouse was mortar bombed, it's presumed Ziva David was killed in the attack and her remains were incinerated by the blast, but her and Tony's daughter Tali survived unharmed. It's later revealed that she survived and went underground for years.
- Nirvana in Fire: The protagonist, Lin Shu, was massacred along with his father and the rest of their army twelve years ago, and the first scene of the story is him covered in blood and burns, falling off of a cliff. Everyone thinks he's dead, from the enemies who betrayed his family to his former friends and Love Interest. With his appearance having changed significantly due to the harrowing circumstances of his survival and not able to fight except through schemes and strategies, Lin Shu maintains the facade as "Mei Changsu" when he returns to the capital to clear his family and comrades' names and help his old friend Prince Jingyan attain the throne... and over the course of the series, various people work out who he really is.
- Obi-Wan Kenobi: In Part I, it's revealed that Obi-Wan, Owen and Bail initially believed that Anakin Skywalker had died after the events of Revenge of the Sith. In Part II, The Third Sister informs Obi-Wan that Lord Vader is looking for him. Obi-Wan panics and she senses it.
Third Sister: You didn't know? He's alive, Obi-Wan. Anakin Skywalker is alive.
- October Faction: Samuel Allen's death is faked by Presidio.
- One Life to Live: Todd Manning was shot multiple times and thrown over a cliff. The last viewers saw of him until the following year was him lying on a beach with his eyes slowly opening, while his wife was left to mourn.
- ¿Qué Pasa, U.S.A.?: An obituary for a woman whose name is the same as grandmother Adela's goes out, and two of her friends come to the house to pay their respects. Adela then finds out about the obituary and nearly passes out. On top of that, the more annoying of the two friends ends up dying while Adela is off making coffee in the kitchen.
- Red Dwarf: In "The Promised Land", Rimmer flies through a window with a bomb that was about to blow up the ship. The bomb explodes a short distance away, leaving Lister and the Cat to believe he sacrificed himself, until he turns up in the corridor behind them.
- Rome. Lucius Vorenus returns to Rome after eight years campaigning in Gaul to find that due to an error, his pay had ceased being sent to his wife Niobe, so she assumed he'd been killed in battle. Unfortunately she then had a child with another man, which she has to keep secret because Vorenus can legally kill both her and the child under Roman law.
- Saturday Night Live:
- Subverted in this
segment from 2001 in which Lou Reed appeared on "Weekend Update" to confront rumors that he was dead. Reed confirmed that yes, he really was dead.
- Played straight in a memorable 1993 skit
in which Paul McCartney, appearing on "The Chris Farley Show'', confirmed that the Paul Is Dead hoax (see Real Life below) was in fact a hoax.
Paul: I wasn't really dead. - In the 40th anniversary special, many jokes were made at the expense of Jon Lovitz that listed him as a beloved cast member that was no longer with us, only to cut to him, sitting in the Live Studio Audience, reacting as if this was news to him. Culminated with him being listed at the end of a montage of all the deceased cast and crew, with the slow-motion of his WTH expression from earlier and somber music.
- Inverted with Generalissimo Fransisco Franco, who has been correctly reported as still dead... but Weekend Update still maintains reporters on the scene in the event that his condition changes. note
- Parodied in a sketch skewering Natalie Cole's duet with her deceased father, Nat King Cole, showing Natalie (Ellen Cleghorne) singing with other deceased singers, e.g. Sammy Davis Jr. (Tim Meadows). However, Natalie sings "Stand By Your Man" with Tammy Wynette, who was actually alive at the time, with Tammy (Melanie Hutsell) furiously interjecting.
Tammy Wynette: (shouting) Hey, I am NOT dead!Natalie Cole: (still singing) I am not dead...Tammy: This is how rumors gets started!Natalie: This is how rumors get started...Tammy: Cut it out, bitch!Natalie: Cut it out, bitch...
- Subverted in this
- Schitt's Creek: Rumors of Moira's death circulate online. Moira is at first horrified, then begins to bask in the attention and praise being dead garners her. She plots her resurrection press conference carefully, but she takes too long and her death is overshadowed by the death of a celebrity kitten.
- Seinfeld: In "The Caddy," George Costanza goes on an unauthorized vacation while his car is parked at his job with the keys locked in it, taking advantage of everyone's belief that he must be at work if his car is there. He remembers too late that a local restaurant regularly leaves fliers on the windshields of all the cars in the lot and sends Jerry to remove the evidence. Finding the car additionally covered in seagull droppings, Jerry and Kramer pick the lock and take it to a car wash, but get in an accident on the way back. George's coworkers find the car with the door broken off and blood in the driver's seat and instantly assume the worst. Hilarity Ensues.
- Sleepy Hollow gives us a subversion with Brooks, who actually was dead, but was resurrected by the Big Bad to continue doing his dirty work:
Brooks: Reports of my death were... pretty much true.
- Smallville: In a bit of a subversion, Earth-1's Lionel Luthor really does die in season 7. A few years later, in season 10, his Earth-2 counterpart comes to Earth-1 and pretends to be the original, saying the trope name almost word-for-word.
- Stargate SG-1: The eventually-oft-killed Daniel Jackson had this happen to him in an early episode. They hold a eulogy for him and start going through his stuff before they realize they've just been tricked into thinking he's dead. And at the beginning of season 7, he reclaims a good many items which Jonas Quinn was using... "You weren't using them" was Jonas' (understandable) explanation. He differs from most of these examples in that most of the time he actually was dead. Later on, though, his teammates get wise about it, and O'Neill outright refuses to hold a memorial service one of the latter times he gets killed, noting that he'll probably be back any time now.
- Star Trek
- Star Trek: The Original Series:
- "Amok Time": Kirk and Spock are forced to fight to the death in some kind of Vulcan mating ritual. Spock seemingly kills Kirk (which snaps him out of a mating frenzy, don't know what that says about their relationship) and returns to the Enterprise devastated and ready to resign from Starfleet. Cue Kirk coming up behind him and asking "Don't you think you had better check with me first?". Cue Spock grabbing him and spinning him around with the biggest, goofiest smile on his face. Turns out McCoy had injected Kirk with something during a time-out that he said was to help the human Kirk compensate for Vulcan's climate, but was really to make it look like Kirk had died so Spock would win the fight without actually killing him.
- "Patterns of Force": Kirk and Spock hear an Ekosian propaganda announcement claiming that an "enemy spaceship" (the Enterprise) has been "utterly destroyed". Kirk drily remarks that Spock is looking well for someone who has been utterly destroyed.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
- "Duet": The Cardassian war criminal Gul Darhe'el gets apprehended by the crew, only for Gul Dukat to inform them that the real Darhe'el has been dead for several years. Darhe'el initially falls back on this trope before finally breaking down and admitting the truth — he's one of Darhe'el's former assistants who was so horrified by what he witnessed that he's impersonating Darhe'el in an attempt to force Cardassia into owning up to the atrocities they inflicted upon the Bajorans.
- Invoked for the purpose of humor in the series finale. When Jake asks after the welfare of Kasidy (pregnant and struggling with Morning Sickness), she quips, "Reports of my death have been exaggerated... but not by much."
- Star Trek: The Original Series:
- Supernatural: Dean's "demise was exaggerated" after a Shapeshifter who assumed his form was killed.
- The Young and the Restless:
- Victor supposedly dies in a car accident but is rescued by a blind woman who cares for him on her farm and even educates him about who he'd been before. In another instance, he was actually being held prisoner after a plane crash.
- Victor again, who is so fed up with his bickering family that he allows them to believe him dead.
- La Tumba Falsa (The False Tombstone) by Mexican group Los Tigres Del Norte tells about the narrator who was abandoned by an unfaithful wife along with multiple children. Rather then tell them the truth, he makes up a story that their mother died and points out a tomb in a cemetery with no visitors as being their mother's grave. The narrator lives in guilt as his children go their lives leaving flowers and paying respects to this particular grave.
- On "Cocktail Bar" (from Monty Python's Live at Drury Lane album), four businessmen engage in shop talk about an associate who made a financial killing, invested it, and is declaring himself as dead on April 5 as a tax dodge.
- Occurs a couple of times in We Are All Pokémon Trainers:
- In the alternate timeline, a flashback implies Cyrus had the mind-controlled Dialga kill DS, and she is reported dead to the other Trainers. Only when she arrives for the finale is revealed that Dialga resisted Cyrus's command long enough to imprison DS along with the other Legendaries instead.
- Later, when DS and the Lake Trio finally find Palkia, who is the only one who can help them escape from the other dimension, they discover that Palkia has been petrified, presumably having been that way since the arc began.
- The One Ring: Bardings who take the "Birthright" cultural Virtue get a single-use Unexplained Recovery from otherwise certain death, but their Standing score is reset to zero because they're presumed dead by their people.
- In William Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1 the character Falstaff fakes his death when he is engaged by Douglas, a Scottish Knight to save his own life. When his friend Prince Hal gives a Premature Eulogy and mentions him getting emboweled, Falstaff gets up unharmed objecting to being emboweled.
- BattleTech: You're shown the apparent death of Lady Kamea Arano during a Military Coup at the end of the Justified Tutorial. However, she narrates the Framing Device. Turns out the footage you saw of her DropShip being shot down on launch was faked by the coup plotters: she got offworld fine and spent the next three years dodging assassins.
- In Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun, Oxanna is a Nod broadcaster who rescues Slavik. She is declared dead to cover up her betrayal so its a surprise when she showed up, took her usual anchor seat and killed her co-anchor before announcing that Slavik is the true disciple of Kane.
- Command & Conquer: Tiberium Wars: In the Nod campaign, Kane is believed dead before resurfacing a few missions later. As he himself lampshades, his enemies have a bad habit of reporting his death prematurely.
Kane: Once again, the world is quick to bury me.
- Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories: In the first chapter, Dark Hero Axel is reported as dead (Adell and Rozalin just knocked him out), and he spends several chapters trying to convince people he's not. His own mother goes into mourning and then chews him out when he calls to reassure her because she thinks he's an unusually cruel prankster; even after he MCs the Coliseum battle to jumpstart his career, the newscast "lose" the footage and claims that he's an escaped asylum inmate who thinks he's Axel. Much later his producer is revealed to have been behind it all to cover up his embezzlement.
- Dragon Quest IV: When Solo/Sofia first visits the town of Casabranca/Branca (and Endor), many people s/he talks to keep acting as if s/he were killed by foes rather than Eliza/Celia, as if Solo/Sofia never existed at all!
- In the Patton campaign of Empires: Dawn of the Modern World, Captain O'Reilly is killed by Demarco but he is found still alive in the final level.
- Escape from Monkey Island:
- The game starts with Elaine discovering that, because she spent so much time out of the government of her islands, she was declared dead and had to get re-elected.
Elaine Marley: I'm going down to city hall to see about getting declared un-dead.
Guybrush Threepwood: Won't that make you a flesh-eating zombie? - Later, Meathook mentions that he had hear that Guybrush had been killed by a giant clam. Guybrush says that rumours of death have been greatly exaggerated; Meathook says that they were also celebrated.
Guybrush: What?
Meathook: Nothing.
- The game starts with Elaine discovering that, because she spent so much time out of the government of her islands, she was declared dead and had to get re-elected.
- Fallout: New Vegas:
- You can meet up with the people that were responsible for you getting shot in the head. Most of them react in shock that you're alive.
- In the backstory, this has happened to Joshua Graham five times. 1st Recon, NCR's elite sniper squad has reported five confirmed kills on him, only for him to show up alive each time. This has led to him becoming The Dreaded and when you meet him in the Honest Hearts DLC, Graham is indeed inhumanly durable and difficult to kill.
- The Lonesome Road DLC adds a perk, "Thought You Died", which is basically this.
- Final Fantasy:
- Final Fantasy XII: Balthier name-checks this trope when speaking of Basch, who was publicly announced as having been executed for the murder of his king but is in fact the victim of a Frame-Up and has spent the last two years being interrogated in a Hellhole Prison.
- Final Fantasy Tactics has a meta example: The final scene between Ovelia and Delita at the end of the game where they stab each other was misinterpreted for years as ending in either one or both of them dead as the camera pulls away. Director Yasumi Matsuno, however, states that neither of them actually died at the end of the game and her and Delita had a long and prosperous rule together, albeit they were each paranoid of the other from that day forward before they both eventually passed on.
- Fire Emblem: Three Houses: The overworld narration informs the player that Dimitri is dead on two story routes. In one, he shows up as an enemy commander and survives that, until he's actually Killed Offscreen. For real this time. On Azure Moon, the Player Character is reunited with him almost immediately and doesn't have time to dwell on it, though he's undergone Sanity Slippage in the meantime. Also in Azure Moon, Dedue can suffer Big Guy Fatality Syndrome if you didn't successfully complete a sidequest earlier in the game. If you did, he's this trope.
- Halo:
- Halo: Reach: Doctor Halsey quotes this trope. The casualty reports had listed her as K.I.A., or so Noble Team thought.
- Halo 2: Near the beginning of the level "Uprising" in, the Arbiter runs into some friendly Elite forces. He's greeted with "The Arbiter! I thought he was dead!"
- Halo Wars 2: A variation of this happens when Isabel first meets Captain James Cutter aboard the Spirit of Fire. note
Isabel: "James Cutter, Captain of the Spirit of Fire. You're supposed to be lost with all hands."
James Cutter: "Not so lost, it seems."
- Heroes of the Storm:
- Falstad Wildhammer gets to name-drop the trope for one of his Stop Poking Me! quotes as a reference to an incident
where Blizzard fudged their own lore for World of Warcraft, making this an unusual meta example. There's also this gem from his bio:
Despite wild speculation, Falstad has never been dead and anyone who claims such is a liar. - Medivh has a Stop Poking Me! line that differs a bit:
Medivh: Reports of my death were greatly exaggerated. I mean, yes, I died, but people love to embellish.
- Falstad Wildhammer gets to name-drop the trope for one of his Stop Poking Me! quotes as a reference to an incident
- King's Quest (2015): A reboot/reimagining/sequel to the King's Quest franchise, King Graham banters with Mordon/Mordack, asking him how he's alive when he extinguished his fire years ago (referring to Graham using magic to summon rain to defeat Mordack while he turned himself into fire). Mordack says he was hiding under the floorboard.
- League of Legends: After respawning, the champion Ezreal says this quote, word-by-word.
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: Subverted. Link and Zelda have been presumed dead... for about a hundred years. Link was, very nearly, killed in battle, and spent that century in a healing sleep that kept him from aging; Zelda spent it trapped in the Malice of Calamity Ganon. Consequently, assuming the Hylian Champion survived his killing doesn't stop people from thinking he's dead.
- Mass Effect 2: Shepard actually was dead for two years, which leads to trouble when they return to the Citadel and is picked up by the security scanners as being dead. Fortunately, a friendly C-Sec officer changes the records without making Shepard jump through all the hoops they would normally have to go through. It is mentioned that folks fake their own death fairly often as a tax dodge — possibly a Shout-Out to a gag in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where Hotblack Dessiato is apparently spending a year dead for tax reasons. You can also have them keep you out of the system so to security, you don't exist. Several characters will, naturally enough, comment on this when you meet them again. Wrex (assuming he survived the first game) gets a good one:
Wrex: What brings you here? How's the Normandy?
Shepard: Destroyed in a Collector surprise attack. I ended up spaced.
Wrex: Well, you look good. Ah, the benefits of a redundant nervous system!
Shepard: Yeah, Humans don't have that.
Wrex: Oh. It must have been painful, then. - Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and Middle-earth: Shadow of War: Invoked. Because they were created as soldiers by Sauron, orcs are actually very hard to kill unless straight-up decapitated. As a result, it's a game mechanic that orcs who have been promoted to Nemeses can heal up from presumed fatal blows you dealt them in your last encounter and return to fight you again. They can even survive getting severed in two! In Shadow of War, your own Branded Orcs can likewise potentially shrug off killing blows and return to service.
- Ninja Gaiden: In the original trilogy, Irene Lew is thought to have been killed in the opening of the third game. She shows up later on and she is not very happy with her former boss trying to kill her.
Irene: Did you think that I would die that easily?
- No Umbrellas Allowed: Yujin Oh, the former journalist who became the founder of AVAC, was reported to have died in 2069, but is revealed in the last two weeks to be alive but Fixed during the game's events. AVAC has been monitoring him in the Fixie residence, but they lied about his death and refused to talk about him out of shame for his actions, which is why Merry warned you against selling anything owned by Yujin. In truth, Manjo Moo, the current AVAC leader, tried but failed to kill Yujin for trying to expose the organization as a fraud, so he imported Fixer from Bluebird for personal gain and silenced Yujin with it.
- Overwatch employs this trope for no less than five of its playable Heroes:
- Jack Morrison and Gabriel Reyes were last seen caught in an explosion that destroyed Overwatch headquarters, resulting in the two being declared dead. They survive to this day as Soldier: 76 and Reaper, respectively.
- Tracer was thought to be gone after the prototype fighter jet she was flying had its teleportation capabilities malfunction and cause the craft and her to vanish until Winston saved her with technology that prevents her from jumping about the space-time continuum.
- Hanzo was forced by his organized crime clan to kill his younger brother Genji, and Genji was thought to be dead as a result. In reality, Overwatch saved his life, giving him a new cyborg body. The revelation that Genji is alive leaves some rather deep-seated issues within Hanzo, who had been paying respects to the presumed-dead Genji every year until Genji in his new body showed up.
- Ana was counter-sniped in the eye by Widowmaker during a crucial rescue mission and was presumed to be killed. Declaring this her greatest failure due to the personal circumstances of her mistake, she decided it would be better if the world thought she died, keeping her survival and recovery a secret.
- In the same comic, Ana is surprised to see Widowmaker at all, as she had been presumed dead after her disappearance following her (Widowmaker's) husband's death. Ana quickly deduces that Widowmaker must have killed her husband and disappeared, before being interrupted by the aforementioned shot.
- Persona 5: To expose the traitor among them and to learn who was behind the mental shutdowns, the Phantom Thieves devised a plan to use Sae's Palace as a means of helping Joker fake his death by having the traitor (a.k.a. Akechi) kill a cognitive Joker. After learning who ordered the hit, they hijack the airwaves of the world to reveal the truth and to send a calling card to the Big Bad, Masayoshi Shido.
- Resident Evil: Albert Wesker and later, Jill Valentine both fall under this trope; Wesker in Resident Evil – Code: Veronica and Jill in Resident Evil 5.
- The Screecher: According to both the rescue team's note and the helicopter crew once contacted, Bill was believed to be among the campers that had perished. He is, however, still very much alive. What likely happened is that the rescue team found another corpse and assumed it to be Bill because the lack of a face made identification tough and because they didn't know Bill was away from the campsite looking for missing campers himself.
- Spec Ops: The Line: Col. John Konrad gives an interesting inversion of this trope. As it turns out, the real Col. Konrad had taken up residence in one of Dubai's towers, and eventually, out of depression over the failure of the evacuation of Dubai's people, committed suicide. The Konrad who has been speaking to Cpt. Martin Walker was just a figment of his imagination, and the moment Walker finds Konrad's corpse, the imaginary Konrad walks up to the body and gives it a genuinely amused look, before stating with a smirk:
"Konrad": It seems that reports of my... survival... have been greatly exaggerated."
- Spyro: Year of the Dragon: Spyro goes through a portal and ends up in a faraway land where dragons were thought to be extinct. He replies with "Rumors of our extinction were greatly exaggerated."
- Super Robot Wars 30: Choosing the Earth route at the start of the game reveal that Amuro Ray and Char Aznable had died due to the events of Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack. Early on, you end up picking up Char, back in his "Quattro Bajeena" alias, and a little later, Chan Agi along with Amuro. It turns out Amuro and Chan were secretly taken away by The Federation and placed under house arrest because the higher-ups were afraid of the power they displayed during the Axis Shock, while Quattro escaped the final battle and went into hiding due to the whole "wanted terrorist" thing (and never contacted his former allies out of shame for his crimes).
- Syphon Filter 2: Jason Chance is assumed by Gabe to have been killed. He emerges as the final boss.
- Team Fortress 2: Whenever Scout is revived in a Mann vs. Machine map using the Re-Animator, he has this to say:
Scout: Reports of my death were BULLCRAP!!
- Tekken: The beginning of Tekken 5 has Heihachi seemingly being blown up by multiple JACK robots pining him down and using their self-destructs, completely destroying the temple he was inside and leaving behind a flaming ruin. An onlooking Raven even drops the dramatic "Heihachi Mishima...is dead" line. Turns out Heihachi survived and crawled out of the crater looking more pissed that the world had the audacity to claim he died than anything else. Heihachi then one-ups himself when he returns in canon DLC for Tekken 8, despite seemingly dying at the end of Tekken 7 during his Final Battle with Kazuya and his "corpse" being tossed into a volcano and the main story of 8 (plus Word of God who turned out to be a Lying Creator) insisting he was dead.
- The Walking Dead: At the end of the first season, Lee watches as Kenny is surrounded by a group of walkers and is presumed to have perished. In the next season, Clementine is surprised to meet him again as she was told about his fate.
- Yakuza: Like a Dragon: Ichiban Kasuga's death makes headline news after the explosion that Reiji Ishioda set off to kill Kasuga and himself, but he reveals himself to be alive at a rally for Ryo Aoki's election.
- Zombies, Run!: Runner 3, Simon Lauchlan uses this phrase exactly when Runner 5 leads Runner 4, Jody Marsh, to the believed dead runner to avoid capture by the ministry.
- Girl Genius:
- Madam Oglavia Spudna has this response to a horrified captured librarian who has just realized who the well-known Torture Technician is as she was thought to be dead.
- When Maxim challenges Old Man Death to a fight for his hat the old man mentions that some of the cavalry that they once rode with was through a few years ago and had said Maxim was dead.
Maxim was reported dead since he was "detached" and didn't align himself with Wulfenbach like the rest of the Jägers.
- In Joe vs. Elan School, after Joe returns home from three years in Juvenile Hell, Joe's friend Chloe tells him that, among other things — including that he'd moved to California or been sent to prison — she'd heard rumors that he was dead.
- In Kill Six Billion Demons, Gog-Agog gloatingly announces that news of her demise has been greatly exaggerated, talking over Allison starting to object that no one had thought the practically indestructible Gog-Agog was dead in the first place.
- In The Order of the Stick, after Roy defeats Xykon in the Redmountains, he thought he finally fulfilled his mission, unaware that Redcloak had a Soul Jar that would enable Xykon to regenerate his body. It wasn't until the Azure City saga where Roy learned from his father that Xykon was still alive.
- Stand Still, Stay Silent: Emil and Lalli try to escape a giant via a frozen body of water, but the fact that it can't hold Emil results in Lalli killing the giant via a burst of magic that shatters both the giant and the ice. They manage to escape on an ice floe and get ashore somewhere far away from the rest of the crew. When Sigrun backtracks the next morning looking for them, all she finds is the giant's exploded corpse right next to the part of the body of water that got its ice blown to bits by the magic burst. She comes to the conclusion anyone would be killed by that and tells the rest of the crew upon returning.
- Unsounded: Bell's butchers in Ethelmik think they've killed Emil and Elka when their pair goes over the falls, and Bell uses Emil as a martyr while pushing the story that it was an Aldish attack that destroyed the city. Emil gets a huge state funeral despite the lack of body, and then Emil and Elka show up still chasing the silver and trying to dismantle Bell's superweapon.
- On the Dream SMP, Tommy ends up on the receiving end of this twice.
- The first time this happened was at the end of at the end of the Exile arc in Season 2. When Tubbo came to Logstedshire to visit him, he spotted the pillar Tommy made to jump to his death from, not knowing that Tommy didn't go through with his suicide attempt, and immediately assumed the worst with the result being everyone except Dream believes Tommy to be dead.
- It happened again in a much more twisted way in Season 3. After being trapped in Pandora's Vault with Dream, the word was spread that he was dead, only for him to return to the SMP proper a week after his death was announced. The twist is that Tommy was killed by Dream but got resurrected, and no one knew that he came Back from the Dead until he returned from the prison.
- Pirates SMP: After Acho became The Runaway for over a year before the start of the SMP, leaving the house without a note, stars older brother, Scott assumed star dead until seeing star again on Day 1. Tragically, this is subverted in the finale; Graecie and Apo's initial reaction to Scott breaking the news as the only witness to Acho pulling a More Hero than Thou for him is to assume Scott is joking and say it's not funny, to which Scott, wracked with Survivor Guilt by this point, can only respond he wishes he were joking.
- SMPLive: Despite seemingly being killed by Travis, Rye (Gold's parrot), or perhaps a doppelgänger, still resides in Connor's house.
- All Hail King Julien: Several characters assumed to have been eaten by fossa have turned up in the kingdom, including Julien's own parents. Presumably, death by fossa is so common that anyone who suddenly vanishes is assumed to have been eaten.
- Arcane: Everyone assumed Vi had died with the rest of her family, not secretly locked up in jail. When she returns to the Undercity, people are appropriately shocked to see someone back from the dead.
- Avatar: The Last Airbender: This is Aang's status for half of the third season following the second season finale, where Azula kills Aang but Katara brings him back. While Sokka is excited to have such a stealthy advantage, Aang is initially upset that the world thought their only hope to end the war was gone forever, but eventually decides that it's best that the world not know the Avatar is alive for now. Unfortunately, Azula, being The Chessmaster she is, had a feeling that Aang was alive and not only had a plan to defend against the Gaang's invasion, but also make them waste their stealthy advantage.
- Beavis and Butt-Head: In the revival, Beavis is convinced that Daria Morgendorffer committed suicide. Butt-Head corrects him that she just moved away.
- Dilbert had all of his benefits cut at work after spending a short period of time dead.
- DuckTales (2017): Ludwig von Drake is depicted as dead in this continuity, appearing only in flashbacks and old recordings while his descendants maintain his old S.H.U.S.H. vault. Except the Grand Finale reveals he's been alive the whole time, forced to work for F.O.W.L. as a prisoner. When Gyro questions how he can possibly be alive all these years, Ludwig states he's been so busy he forgot to die.
- Family Guy: This happens three times. The first time with Peter, who got out of a hospital bill by writing that he was dead. The rest of the episode involved him making a deal with the Grim Reaper. The second time was when they got Quagmire out of a marriage with a psycho woman. Since her last name was also Quagmire by marriage, and she grabbed the Grim Reaper's hand (killing herself in the process), it all worked out nicely. The third time also involves the Grim Reaper, but he was just there, he didn't harvest. Peter, Cleveland, Joe, and Quagmire all get stranded on a deserted island for quite some time and are declared dead. Peter has to save his marriage since Brian married Lois during that time.
- Futurama: Cubert takes over Planet Express because the Professor had been declared dead as a tax dodge.
Farnsworth: Tax dodge nothing! You take one nap in a ditch in the park and they start declaring you this and that!
- Gravity Falls: For half the second season, Dipper was under the assumption that Agents Powers and Trigger were eaten by the zombie hoard in "Scary-Oke". In "Not What He Seems", he learns otherwise.
- Hazbin Hotel: Alastor the Radio Demon had been inactive in Hell for seven years before he approached Charlie to help her hotel project. Many of his fellow Overlords assumed he had been killed by an angel in one of the annual Exterminations. While Alastor never truly elaborates on why he was gone, he does find the rumors about his absence entertaining.
- Hey Arnold!: In one episode, Dino Spumoni fakes his death, counting on it boosting his popularity. Then he realized he couldn't get paid if he was dead.
- Iron Man: The Animated Series: Tony fakes Iron Man's death (this was back when he still had a secret identity in the comics) after he goes off the rails in "Armor Wars". When he gets back in the saddle, he drops the line, attributing it to Mark Twain. "Iron Man lives."
- Jackie Chan Adventures: Occurs almost verbatim early in the second season, upon discovering that Shendu has returned (as a ghost) and is in possession of the Dark Hand's boss, Valmont:
Shendu: Reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated, Chan.
- Korgoth of Barbaria: The dark wizard Specules is annoyed when he finds a bunch of thieves in his castle looting the place on the assumption that he was dead. Turns out, he was just taking a cruise holiday.
- Mickey's April Fools has Mickey Mouse pretending to die in front of Mortimer as an April Fools prank. Mickey then gets a letter declaring he's inherited a million dollars, but he can't get it because he's supposed to be dead.
- Ruby Gloom: In the first episode, a rumor gets around that Ruby is dying. By the end, everyone thinks she's dead and is mourning her, while she tries to correct them. All Played for Laughs.
- The Patrick Star Show: In "Uncredible Journey", GrandPat breaks the downstairs toilet, so the family calls a plumber. When he arrives, he hears noise from upstairs (sentient toilet Tinkle, Ouchie, and Pinkeye playing together) and captures the three of them, then replaces Tinkle with a regular toilet. The Star family see that Tinkle isn't eating or playing, and mistakenly believe he's dead, holding a funeral in the front yard. After finding their way home, the three pets reveal themselves, and Tinkle is welcomed back into the family.
- Peter Pan & the Pirates: In "Demise of Hook", Captain Hook says these exact words after he fakes his death and poses as a ghost.
Peter Pan: (after being captured) Why, you're no ghost!
Tinkerbell: You're not even dead!
Captain Hook: What can I say, except that the reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated. - Pixie, Dixie and Mr. Jinks: In "Ghost With the Most," Dixie fakes his death after Jinks clobbers with with a fireplace shovel and dresses up as his ghost to haunt Jinks into subservience to Pixie. When Jinks gets wise, he fakes his own death and turns the tables.
- Robot Chicken: A sketch based on Bambi has the titular deer visit the house of a man named David, and is surprised to find his mother is alive and married to him. When Bambi tells his mother that his father said she couldn't be in the forest with them because man had taken her away, Bambi's Mom clarifies that a man had taken her away. She also reveals that she and David had a half-deer, half-human son named Bambi II.
- She-Ra and the Princesses of Power has this as the reason why Entrapta pulls a (downplayed) Face–Heel Turn. During a rescue mission to save some of the other Rebellion members from the Horde, the rest of the group see her get trapped in an incinerator that turns on just seconds later. However, Entrapta manages to use a Robot Buddy to shield herself from the flames, before proceeding to hide within the vents of the enemy base for the next two days awaiting rescue. She's found by two of the villains, Catra and Scorpia, who manipulate her into believing that she was purposefully left behind due to being seen as a nuisance. (Well, Catra does because she's a Manipulative Bitch; Scorpia believes this narrative because she's a Minion with an F in Evil and thinks Catra's her friend and wouldn't lie to her.) This plus the Horde's willingness to support her more dangerous research leads to her joining, while her former friends are completely convinced she's dead.
- The Simpsons:
- Homer Simpson fakes his death in "Mother Simpson" to escape a day of work. It eventually leads to him discovering his long-lost mother, whose own death had been greatly exaggerated decades previously by Homer's father. She then fakes her death AGAIN at the end of the episode.
- Lisa was presumed dead in "Lisa the Tree Hugger", owing to the fact that she was supposed to be camping an ancient redwood when it got hit by lightning (which, as it turns out, was caused by the bucket she had in the tree). She refused to come clean because her "death" was inspiring the people, but finally did when it was twisted by the rich Texan guy into publicity for his new amusement park.
- Bart once had Milhouse help him fake his death on a cliff.
- "Simpsons Tall Tales": When Bart and Nelson take the roles of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, the two boys can be seen lying on a rafter grinning down at the townspeople who are attending the boys' funeral. Subverted that it turns out that they really are dead; their bodies, which ended up with those looks on them, are lowered to their caskets.
- Lampshaded in the soap "Reach for the Sun" that Marge and Lisa are watching:
Marguarita: Father McGrath! I thought you were dead!
Father McGrath: I was! - "Sunday, Cruddy Sunday": Marge and Lisa work on an egg painting kit endorsed by Vincent Price. After discovering they're missing a set of decorative feet that's supposed to come with the kit, Marge calls the company and is shocked when Price himself answers even though he'd died several years before the episode aired. Price declares "You should know the grave could never claim me" before giving Marge instructions on how to get the feet from his next-of-kin. He then caps off by saying "I must now return to the sweet embrace of the crypt." Lisa's not sure if Price is supposed to be alive or dead by that point. Things get even more complicated when he appears at the end of the episode, driving a bus.
- South Park: One episode features a guy being frozen for almost three years. He comes back to his wife who says that she assumed he was dead and married someone else and now had two kids, aged 8 and 13. After a while, the guy says, "8 and 13!?"
- The Spectacular Spider-Man: In one episode, after the titular hero was seemingly crushed to death in a battle with Shocker, Marko and O'hirn take advantage of it by robbing a store. When Spidey shows up to foil them, he tries to quote the trope name but fails and just tells them to tell Shocker he wants a rematch.
- Spider-Man: The Animated Series: In "The Spot," Spider-man convinces Spot to help him take down Kingpin. So, Spot brings an apparently unconscious Spider-man to Kingpin. Upon revealing the ploy, Spider-man delivers this line.
- Spider-Man Unlimited: The Green Goblin quotes this almost word for word when he shows up in the final episode to assist Spidey and the other heroes against the High Evolutionary and his forces.
- Superman: The Animated Series: Occurs in-universe in "The Late Mr. Kent"; Clark Kent is apparently killed in a car bomb and the episode opens on his funeral, because he had evidence that would've exonerated a man on death row and convicted the real culprit. The audience knows right from the start he isn't really dead, since he's Superman. The problem is for Superman to bring Clark Kent back to life without revealing his secret identity (he hates the idea of having to be Superman 24/7), which is made difficult because the car's explosion had an eyewitness. He's eventually able to bring his alter ego back when he finds out the eyewitness had horrible eyesight, and concocts a story about temporary amnesia with his childhood friend Lana Lang (who already knows he's Superman). The villain eventually deduces the real reason Clark survived is because he's actually Superman, but too late for the info to be useful.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003):
- After "The Shredder Strikes Back Part 2", the Foot believed that the Turtles and their allies were killed in the fire at April's antique store. This was due to Baxter Stockman faking proof in order to steal an Utrom exoskeleton from Shredder. The Turtles would take advantage of this by launching their own sneak attack in "Return to New York".
- This has happened to the Shredder multiple times. First, the Turtles thought he was killed by the collapsing water tower at the end of "The Shredder Strikes Part 2". Then, when Leonardo seemingly decapitated him in "Return to New York Part 3". Finally, he appeared to have been killed by the destruction of TCRI in "Secret Origins Part 3", only to show up alive at the end of the "City At War" arc.
- Transformers: Prime: Shockwave paraphrases this trope in his first present-day appearance in the third season. For context, his previous "appearance" was in a flashback in the second season showing him pursuing an escaping Arcee and Cliffjumper through a Space Bridge portal from his lab, only to be shot right in the eye and disappearing in the explosion of the Space Bridge with Autobot and Decepticon alike writing him off as likely killed. In actual fact, he survived but badly damaged and marooned on Cybertron, where he rebuilt himself and pursued his studies alone until he detected the Decepticon scavenger party and linked up with them.
"Reports of my demise were greatly... premature."
- Wakfu: Both Sadlygrove and Rubilax were under the impression Goultard was dead for some time before the start of the first season, tomb and everything. Goultard dissuades that notion by literally walking out of said tomb, telling Sadlygrove "Well, I'm not dead anymore!" and Rubilax "Death's terribly overrated, you know." It doesn't hurt that Goultard is The Ageless due to fulfilling the duties of the god Iop while the latter is off reincarnating in mortal form (of which Sadlygrove is unknowingly the current incarnation of). Other material suggests even if he was killed, he's still Barred from the Afterlife because he kept beating up all the dead and demons.
- Wander over Yonder: In "The Pet", Wander befriends a man-eating alien and begins training it to be a pet; when attempting to give it a teddy bear as a gift, it spits at it and rips it to shreds before wrapping it in a cocoon. When Sylvia opens the cocoon minutes later, she mistakes the teddy bear's remains for Wander's fur, thinking he had been eaten by the alien.
- The Trope Namer is Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens, who gave the trope title as a statement in response to hearing that his obituary had been published in the New York Journal. The Journal had mistakenly reported the illness of his cousin James Ross Clemens (who wasn't actually dead, either) as Twain's own death. The original quote was:
James Ross Clemens, a cousin of mine, [...] is well now. The report of my illness grew out of his illness; the report of my death was an exaggeration.
- During the 1864 Siege of Petersburg in the The American Civil War, Union Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, famous for leading a heroic stand at Gettysburg, was severely wounded when a bullet passed through both hips and tore through his groin. Doctors predicted his wound was fatal, and he was "posthumously" promoted to Brigadier General. Newspapers in his home state of Maine ran obituaries about his supposed death. The doctor's diagnosis turned out to be accurate, but the predicted timing was not. Chamberlain did die from his wound, but not for another 50 years, in 1914. He was the last recorded civil war veteran to die from battle wounds.
- Rudyard Kipling was also once declared dead by a magazine, to which he wrote a letter saying "I've just read that I am dead. Don't forget to delete me from your list of subscribers."
- Happens sporadically to non-notable individuals; usually, this results from poor communication between a family and the funeral home (i.e., a family member incorrectly reporting that someone had died, when in fact that person is still alive although death is likely imminent). On these rare occasions, the funeral home will submit for publication to local newspapers an obituary that had been pre-written.
- Every major news outfit will have pre-written (or, for broadcast media, pre-edited) obituary notices ready to go for notable figures, particularly those considered at high risk of non-natural death and those old enough that natural death could happen any day now. As can be seen from several of the following examples, it's an unfortunately short step from "ready to go" to "gone out the door without proper verification, better call the Legal department". In addition, Obit packages for very notable figures can sometimes be put up for sale (Pope John Paul II's obituary was released on DVD
, for example). The logistics of getting product to the shops in a timely fashion pretty much ensures that copies of it are floating around, open to misinterpretation, before the subject has rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible.
- On August 27, 2008, Bloomberg accidentally published a 17-page obituary regarding Steve Jobs' death. In a subsequent public appearance Jobs joked about the accident by displaying on-screen, "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated." Jobs actually died about three years later.
- A newspaper mistakenly published an obituary for Alfred Nobel, instead of his deceased brother. Nobel was shocked to see a newspaper crowing that "the merchant of death is dead" due to his invention of dynamite and gun propellants, and was inspired to start the Nobel Prize so that he would be remembered for something else. It worked.
- CBS News reported that Arizona Congressman Gabrielle Giffords had died after she was wounded in a mass shooting on January 8, 2011. At the time, she was actually in surgery in critical condition. She survived, although six other lives were lost in that same incident, including a Federal Judge and a nine-year-old girl.
- Britney Spears went through this at least twice:
- Her Myspace page was once hacked (or so they claim) with a fake death announcement.
- In 2001, Spears was the victim of a prank news report on radio station KEGL in Fort Worth, Texas, where the disc jockeys claimed that the then 19-year-old pop princess was killed in a car accident and that her then-boyfriend Justin Timberlake was also either killed or that his death was expected shortly. Outrage quickly followed, major news media quickly debunked the report and the disc jockeys responsible for the report were fired.
- Prior to his real death in 2008, Doctor Who regular Kevin Stoney (who played Mavic Chen, Tobias Vaughn, and Tyrum) was reported dead in 1985 according to Dreamwatch. However, he appeared at a convention in 1987 to prove he was still alive, which shocked many fans.
- In India, it's popular to bribe an official to declare a relative dead so that you can inherit his property. It has all the advantages of murder without the unpleasant messiness. Lal Bihari
had this happen to him and it took him years to literally get his life back. He was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize
for his foundation of the Association of Dead People. One tactic of Association members is to get arrested at protests, leaving the authorities to explain how dead people can be arrested.
- On June 25, 2009, Jeff Goldblum was reported dead of a fall on a movie set in New Zealand. This was a cruel online hoax capitalizing on several recent celebrity deaths, most infamously Michael Jackson's — Goldblum had never even been to New Zealand and certainly wasn't filming a movie there! On June 30th he went on The Colbert Report (on which he had made several recent appearances) to deny the reports of his death. He then subsequently caved to the evidence (an Australian news program clip reporting his death), confirmed his own death, and gave his own "eulogy."
In a 2010 appearance on Jonathan Ross's show, he went into detail
about what it was like both to learn he was believed to be dead and to get calls from colleagues, family members, and friends who heard the "news".
- In the aftermath of the demonstration on 17th November 1989 that launched the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, a rumor has spread that a student named Martin Šmíd was killed during the event. This turned to be a misinformation; a student of that name was at the demonstration but left before the police attack began. He was interviewed on television, presumably to dispel the rumor...and the transmission started at just the wrong moment when he was saying, referring to the events of the day: "Death touched me." (In case this figure of speech doesn't translate well to English, he meant: "I was horrified.")
- Some accidental premature publishing on cnn.com revealed that CNN at least has outlines and some graphics prepared for obituaries of famous people who have yet to die, in anticipation of eventually having to get one up on short notice. Notably, they had one for Dick Cheney that was clearly not ready, as it called him "England's favorite grandmother" — a line from Queen Elizabeth II's premature obit.
- When pioneer astronaut Neil Armstrong died, NBC's website reported
that Neil Young had died. (In a Jay Leno man-on-the-street session years previous, Young had been named as the "first man to walk on the moon" by an elderly lady.) The London Telegraph called Armstrong the first woman in space, inspiring little girls everywhere (possibly thinking of Sally Ride, who had died months earlier — and even then she was only the first non-Soviet woman).
- In 1964, news bulletins widely broadcast a report that Nikita Khrushchev had died of "hecaphylphocatirosisus". Apparently, this went out when someone did not notice the notation "Can you confirm this?"
- For a complete list of premature obituaries, check out The Other Wiki.
- Although he was never officially declared to be dead, a very popular meme in the late 1960s suggested that Paul McCartney had died in a car accident around the mid-1960s and was replaced by a lookalike, which really took off in the underground media. The fact that the 'evidence' for this theory largely seemed to stem from a number of obscure and oblique 'references' on Beatles album covers and in song lyrics suggested that large quantities of drugs being ingested probably had something to do with it, but the rumours bedeviled McCartney for years no matter how many times he denied them, including a variation on the Mark Twain 'quote' above: "Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated. If I were dead I'd be the last to know."
- It had been said that the Beatles' manager Brian Epstein cooked up the "Paul is dead" conspiracy. Epstein had doubts about "Paperback Writer" selling as it wasn't a typical Beatles love song, so he hatched the idea for one of them to "die" to drum up publicity for the single. Ringo and George passed on the idea; John offered to be the guy but that was nixed as everyone knew he was a joker anyway. So Paul, by virtue of elimination, was elected to be the "dead man." One of the clues to Paul's supposed demise was the license plate on a car on the Abbey Road cover, which read "28 IF", meant to stand for Paul would have been 28 the following June. Flash forward to 1993 when Paul released his Paul Is Live album which featured him on the famous Abbey Road zebra crossing and a similar license plate: "IS 51."
- A few years ago, there were a number of rumors that actress Natasha Lyonne was at death's door, due to various drug addictions. According to IMDb and the entire run of Orange Is the New Black (in which she is a part of the main ensemble), she's still alive.
- A popular rumor in the '70s and '80s was that Jerry Mathers (of Leave It to Beaver fame) had been killed in Vietnam. Not only is he quite alive and still acting, he never even served in Vietnam.
- At the Battle of Hastings in 1066, a rumour suddenly swept through William the Conqueror's army that Duke William had been killed. The Duke heard of this and took his helmet off so that his army could recognise his red hair. He proceeded to win the battle (in which his opponent King Harold really was killed) and complete the Norman Conquest.
- When Queen Victoria was in her final years, it was frequently reported that she had died and implied that they were just pretending she was still alive to keep her son off the throne.
- In 2008, an internet troll began circulating reports that voice actor Jerry Jewell had died in a car accident. Jewell remarks on it in the DVD commentary for Baccano! episode 9, which was being dubbed around that time: "Yes, I died in a car accident. But I had to record. That's what I'm willing to go through to get the job done." Fitting considering the anime in question, and the fact that such things happen to the characters in it regularly.
- LulzSec once placed a false story on The Sun's website claiming that Rupert Murdoch had died from a drug overdose. It was quickly removed but still managed to be reprinted by The Times and a number of other news sites.
- Steve Burns from Blue's Clues was surprised to hear he had died and been replaced with a lookalike (his character actually left the show to go to college and his brother Joe took over; the show even did a transition episode to explain the in-universe story to viewersnote ). No matter how many times he said he was still alive, some people still believed he was dead.
- In describing the assessments of his medical condition once given to him by various doctors, composer Frédéric Chopin commented "I have been sick as a dog during these past two weeks. Three doctors have visited me. The first said I was going to die; the second said I was breathing my last; and the third said I was already dead."
- Abe Vigoda, known for his acting roles in The Godfather and Barney Miller, was wrongly reported as dead in 1982 by People magazine. Vigoda found this amusing, and had a photo published in Variety of himself sitting up in a coffin reading the mistaken issue of People. In 1987, it happened again after a reporter from Secaucus, New Jersey mistakenly called him "the late Abe Vigoda", which once again prompted much amusement and what spawned the Running Gag about Vigoda's "dead or alive" status. It got to the point where a website was made (abevigoda.com
) to provide real-time updates on the status of Abe Vigoda (current status: Abe Vigoda is dead). When he actually died in 2016, many reports had to state that this wasn't a hoax or misstatement.
- IMDb once mistakenly reported that Mara Wilson (of Matilda and Mrs. Doubtfire fame) was dead. Her joking response was that they were half right.
- Tom Kenny discussed on Marc Maron's podcast how he was once reported dead, and how he thinks that rumors like that are more likely to happen to someone like him, as he's relatively well known but not super well known (using George Clooney as an example of the latter), so the rumors take longer to debunk. The same thing happened to Rodger Bumpass, although he has claimed this to be untrue (the death of Squidward's German voice, Eberhard Prueter, might have been the cause for those rumors).
- Jaroslav Hašek, author of The Good Soldier Švejk, summed up various accounts depicting his alleged death during his World War I captivity in Russia (and short stint as a Bolshevik commissar):
"After I returned to my home country I learnt I had been hanged three times, two times shot, and once even drawn and quartered by wild Kirgiz insurgents, near the Kale-Ishela lake. Finally, I was stabbed during a brawl by drunken sailors in an Odessa pub. The last account I deemed the most likely."
- Bob Hope was twice a victim of death rumors — once in 1998, when he was still in good health, and again in 2003, just three months prior to his actual passing – with a pre-written obituary of the entertainer accidentally published on a news web site. In the 1998 case, where his "death" was actually published on the Associated Press' website, Hope's death was announced in the U.S. House of Representatives, broadcast live on C-SPAN (with camera shots of visibly upset legislators being shown). The 2003 obituary was published on CNN's website.
- Country music pioneer Ray Price was also a victim of the premature obituary, as many national news outlets (from Rolling Stone to USA Today) had reported the singer's purported passing on Sunday, Dec. 15, 2013, from cancer — only for Price's wife, Janie, to reveal that although he was near death, he was still alive. See this link for more details.
Incidentally, Price did die -- approximately a day after the premature obituaries were announced online, leaving behind one of the greatest legacies ever in country music.
- In 1976, ABBA member Björn Ulvaeus appeared on German television to counter a rumour that he and his bandmates had died in a plane crash in what was then West Berlin. Some versions of this rumour claimed that Anni-Frid Lyngstad (aka Frida) had survived, but with such severe injuries that her singing career was effectively over. Needless to say, ABBA were never actually involved in a plane crash (though they did have a near-miss in 1979) and all four are currently still alive.
- On March 16, 2014, US Magazine reported that Wayne Knight had been killed in an auto accident. Upon hearing this, Wayne tweeted "Some of you will be glad to hear this, others strangely disappointed, but...I am alive and well!"
, later adding "Does someone have to DIE to trend? Geez!"
- In 2010 Tawnee Stone, a web softcore porn personality from the mid-1990s, was reported to have died in a car accident; but it was the character Tawnee Stone, not the actress who had done the scenes (and who hadn't made any new material in a long time). The producer spread the rumor to revive interest.
- In the Christmas charity livestreams for the Yogscast in 2013, Simon Lane put a photo of fellow member Alex "Parv" Parvis (also the guitarist for the band Area 11) onscreen, claimed he'd died and said that the photo was a mini-memorial. It very promptly became a meme in the form of "RIP PARV", in no small part thanks to people who believed it was true, and he came back from a gig with the band that very evening to find out he was "dead"
. Even after he cleared the situation up, there were people who still didn't believe he was still alive nearly seven months later.
- Similarly, Simon Lane was a victim of this himself, after some people tried to pretend he had died in order to scam money, under pretences that it would go towards a revival of Shadow of Israphel. Subsequently, his and Lewis Brindley's joint channel turned off comments for around two months, since this was the last straw (other comments had been self-promotion of small channels, spamming for reports of SOI, Moral Guardians complaining unnecessarily, and so on).
- In 2009 actress Nancy Allen was reported to have died of cancer; she later came out and told the public this was untrue. She's still very much alive in 2022.
- For the longest time, the English voice of Mewtwo in Pokémon: The First Movie (credited as "Philip Bartlett") was believed to have died in 2001. However, in 2014, the actor himself came out to put an end to all the confusion,
revealing that he was still alive and that his real name was Jay Goede.
- Judi Dench was the object of a cruel Internet hoax in October 2015. Stories were circulated on the Internet falsely stating she had died. Most credible news reporters checked and refrained from publishing, but the story still circulated virally. Dench herself had to put out an official statement to the effect that she is still here and hopes to be present in the world for some time yet.
- Robert Anton Wilson. Who in the very early Internet days of 1994 was perplexed when people began phoning and writing to his "widow" to express condolences over her sad loss. Wilson had no idea how the rumour started, but when writing about the metaphysics of being "dead" whilst still being alive, said he really appreciated some of the nicer obituaries that were being printed. Apparently an Internet bulletin board had put it out as a joke to see who was taken in.
- In The '90s, four major Australian broadcasting stations announced the death of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. Within an hour they realised it would have been better to have confirmed the story, as they were told in no uncertain terms the 93-year-old Queen Mum was still alive. It turns out an Australian working for Sky News in London had walked in on a test screening of the QM's obituary, got the wrong end of the stick entirely, and rang home to Brisbane with the "scoop." The local radio station put it out, and... let's just say that quite a few Australians no longer work in broadcast news.
- Sometime in 2008, Miley Cyrus' website was hacked with a message saying that she was killed by a drunk driver. Presumably, she wasn't impressed, as she's still alive and doing music.
- One of the more famous examples of this trope was the rumor that John Gilchrist, who played the kid from the famous Life Cereal commercial,
died from overexposure from carbon monoxide after eating Pop Rocks with Coke. The rumor was debunked and Gilchrist is still with us working as a director of media sales for MSG Network.
- In a similar case, Sven Ruygrok appeared in an infamous commercial for Frosties cereal in the UK, leading to a cyberbullying campaign against him and many rumors on the internet that he had committed suicide because of the bullying. Ruygrok has publicly spoken to confirm he is still alive and give his side of the story.
- "I was never killed by Holmes or anyone else." — Businesswoman Kate Durkee on learning that she was being counted among H. H. Holmes' Murder Castle victims, 1896.
- Durkee was one of four people to come up against claims that Holmes had killed them, by the way.
- In the midst of a celebrity death epidemic in January 2016 that claimed David Bowie and Alan Rickman among others, someone made a deeply ridiculous article stating that The Muppets' Animal (a fictional character) had died. While the Muppet team has yet to respond to this, Snopes was quick to debunk the rumor.
- See also the fake obituary for the Pillsbury Doughboy, which was more of an excuse to write a Hurricane of Puns.
- This trope happened to Jackie Chan sometime in 2013, but it didn't take long for it to be confirmed as a hoax.
- When Sir George Martin, the longtime producer of The Beatles, died in March 2016, people confused him with George R. R. Martin, who dispelled rumors of his own death on his LiveJournal account.
- When college basketball star Lauren Hillnote died from cancer in April 2015, a lot of people thought that The Fugees frontwoman Lauryn Hill had passed away. She didn't.
- A clickbait article titled "These celebrities died without anyone knowing" was highlighted with a picture of Jennifer Coolidge. When someone pointed this out to her on Twitter, she responded "Yes, I am dead, and it's great!"
- The main article page for a while depicted actor Chandler Riggs responding via Twitter to a similar scenario, where a photo of him was captioned with a link to "actors who died quietly this year." His response: "I wish LOL".
- Played for Laughs with the final Let's Play Minecraft with Ray Narvaez Jr as part of Achievement Hunter as the team keeps treating Ray's last day as if he's going to die and Ray responding that he's not dying. The fandom tends to play along with this joke.
- In a truly tragic and bizarre turn, when popular fan fiction writer "becuzitswrong" (whose collective stories have over half a million subscribers on fanfiction.net) started suffering serious delays in updating because of chronic health problems, a rumor made the rounds that the writer had died. Eventually, he posted an update to several fan fiction archives saying that, no, he was still alive and would be returning to regular updates soon. He even went so far as to quote the line "reports of my death were greatly exaggerated" and said that "things have finally calmed down and I am starting to write again. It is a wonderful feeling." Unfortunately, he died for real less than a week after this announcement was posted.
- Following the 2011 Japanese earthquake, rumors of Pokémon creator Satoshi Tajiri dying as a result spread on the internet. These were proven false within days.
- The Daily Telegraph mistakenly reported the death of folk violinist Dave Swarbrick of the band Fairport Convention in 1999, saying that he had died at home in Coventry. Swarbrick later quipped, "It isn't the first time I've died in Coventry." He died for real in 2016.
- During Julia Louis-Dreyfus' acceptance speech at the 2016 Emmy Awards, she paid tribute to her father Gérard, who'd passed away two days earlier. However, many Twitter users started mistakenly paying tribute to Richard Dreyfuss, which somewhat amused him.
- deadoraliveinfo.com
used to be a good site to disprove this trope, but new names have only been added infrequently since about 2008, and as of 2017 there's very few people in the database born after 1958.note Not to mention that it still lists certain dead people, such as Ruby Mohammed, Joan Fontaine, Maureen O'Hara, Stan Freberg, and the previously-mentioned Ray Price as still being alive. That said, the siterunners will still update someone's life status to accommodate their death (and occasionally the cause) if they really need to. Nowadays the Celebrity Death Beeper
is your best bet.
- After Beastie Boys' debut album, Licensed to Ill, was released, rumours started to circulate that Mike D had died from a drug overdose. In response, "Shake Your Rump" from Paul's Boutique included the following lyrics:
Well, I'm Mike D, and I'm back from the dead
Chillin' at the beach, down at Club Med - Mambo musician Pérez Prado (born as Dámaso Pérez Prado) was mistakenly reported dead by newspapers in 1983. In reality, it was his brother Pantaleón Pérez Prado (also a musician, and who also had gone by just Pérez Prado years before) who had passed away.
- Musician Rodriguez became incredibly popular in South Africa during The Apartheid Era, as his music struck a chord with anti-apartheid activists. With so little information about him available, partly thanks to South Africa's isolation, Rodriguez soon became Shrouded in Myth, with the most popular story claiming that he had killed himself live on stage during the 1970s. During the late 1990s, a pair of South African fans set out to find out who Rodriguez was and what had happened to him, and were astonished to learn that he was still alive and living in Detroit, completely oblivious to the cult following he had acquired. The story was later turned into the Academy Award-winning documentary Searching for Sugar Man.
- Said word for word by Olivia Newton-John, battling cancer but denying rumors that her time was drawing near. Her actual death was announced in August 2022.
- Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius was mistakenly reported dead during an illness in 175 AD; hearing the news, the troops of Syrian-Roman General Avidius Cassius acclaimed him as new emperor in the Middle East, only to murder him three months later when they learned that Marcus Aurelius was very much alive and preparing military action against them. Some suggest Marcus Aurelius's wife, Faustina the Younger, deliberately misled Avidius Cassius as part of a convoluted way to secure the succession of her teenage son, Commodus, and that Marcus Aurelius was aware of this and it was the reason why he ordered Avidius Cassius's correspondence to be destroyed.
- Model and pin-up legend Bettie Page disappeared at the height of her popularity in The '60s and was widely believed to have died. Considering her rather wild and self-destructive lifestyle, this was not an unreasonable assumption. In The '90s, an investigation into her fate was launched, only to uncover that she was in fact still alive and living in Los Angeles, poor and completely unaware of her iconic status. A horde of fans and admirers (Hugh Hefner not least among them) worked to ensure that she received royalties for reproductions of her work, allowing her to live in relative comfort until her death in 2008. She never returned to the public eye, however, preferring to let her fans remember her as the sex symbol she had been.
- During the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 three workers were sent into the tunnel beneath the reactor to open a set of sluice gates and drain water tanks that were in danger of exploding and worsening the damage. Given the amount of radiation they would be exposed to it was considered a Suicide Mission and initial reports suggested that all three of them had died of Acute Radiation Sickness afterwards. Whether this was part of the official attempts to cover up the extent of the disaster or simply a result of bureaucratic miscommunication is unknown, but the story that they had died persisted for many years. Eventually it was discovered that all three men had actually survived their trip beneath the reactor. As of 2019 two of them, Alexei Ananenko and Valeri Bezpalov, are still alive while the third, Boris Baranov, died of a heart attack in 2005.
- In 1855, a human body found under a bridge in Milwaukee was identified positively by ten witnesses as belonging to a gentleman called John Dwire. During the inquest, Mr. Dwire, who had been living 16 miles away at Kemper's Pier, declared on oath, "Lest anyone here should still think I'm dead, I have come in person to assure him that I am not the corpse found in the river last Saturday morning". The true identity of the corpse was never discovered.
- In 1989, during the making of the Nine Inch Nails music video for "Down In It", a weather balloon holding up a camera being used for filming ended up floating away and the crewmembers were unable to recover it. The balloon traveled 200 miles, where it landed in a field in Michigan and was found by a farmer. After the camera was handed over to the police, they saw footage of what they believed to be the decayed corpse of an unknown man surrounded by two men in what they thought was a gang killing. The footage was then sent to the FBI, where after a year of investigation the truth was discovered: the 'decayed corpse' was actually NIN frontman Trent Reznor covered in cornstarch to appear dead and decayed for the purpose of the music video, and the other two men were then-members Chris Vrenna and Richard Patrick. Reznor, who as of 2022 is still alive, found the whole ordeal amusing.
- "Predictions for the Year 1708", a satire of astrology, written by Jonathan Swift under the name "Isaac Bickerstaff", predicted the death of astrologer and almanac-writer John Partridge,
who had annoyed Swift with a comment about the "infallible" Church of England (effectively equating it with the Roman Catholic Church). On the predicted date, a letter circulated "confirming" Partridge's death and giving him a sarcastic eulogy. Partridge had recurring difficulties convincing people that he was in fact still alive until he finally died for real a few years later.
- Donald O'Brien, an actor who starred in many Spaghetti Westerns and Italian horror films in the 1960s and 1970s, was falsely reported to have died on November 29, 2003; a misconception that's still reflected in many online sources. It didn't help that he'd had health problems since the 80s and gone into retirement in the 90s. As of 2016 he was still very much alive and living in Paris, and apparently finds the entire situation very amusing.
- Death of French politician and businessman Bernard Tapie
has been erroneously announced several times. In one of those (October 2019), French newspaper Le Monde mistakenly published online a pre-written eulogy, and the mistake was obvious since crucial information like date or age of death were left blank; cause of death was cancer, and Tapie was indeed suffering from cancer. He eventually died in October 2021.
- In December of 2020, many people thought that Dick Van Dyke died after he began trending on Twitter. Van Dyke responded by saying that no, he's not dead; it was actually his 95th birthday. By the way, he's still alive as of October 2023.
- Prior to her passing at the end of 2021, Betty White had a lot of false reports of her death circulate on the internet. Strangely, when The Guardian announced her passing, there was no "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer included despite this trope taking effect so many times.
- In an odd case of this, when John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, ABC put up a bumper photo of JFK with the byline "1917-1963"... twenty minutes before wire services were cleared to announce it by press secretary Malcolm Kilduff. Apparently, ABC was going on unofficial news relayed from Eddie Barker of CBS affiliate KRLD. Due to this, NBC ended up being the first news outlet to make the official announcement, about a half-hour after Kennedy was declared dead.
- Ernest Hemingway after surviving not one but two sequential airplane crashes in Africa.
- Showing that this trope doesn't just apply to people, German radio reported that the carrier USS Wasp (CV-7) had been sunk in May 1942 during a mission to transport RAF Spitfires to Malta. The ship's crew, who hadn't even been attacked, much less sunk, had themselves a good laugh, then gathered to symbolically throw a bucket of water overboard and declare their ship had been 'salvaged'.
- Similarly, the Japanese claimed to have sunk the carrier USS Enterprise (CV-6) (yes, that one) three different times, but she survived the entire war.
- Something similar happened to USS Lexington, CV-16. The Japanese had sunk her predecessor, USS Lexington CV-2, so the sudden deployment of CV-16 caught them off guard and made them question the original sinking, believing that she had somehow been raised and put back together after exploding. It took a Japanese scout getting eyes on CV-16 for Japan to realize she was a much more modern ship than CV-2. CV-16 would be reported sunk no less than four time by infamous propaganda mouthpiece Tokyo Rose, playing this trope entirely straight (to the apparent entertainment of CV-16's crew, who reportedly viewed it as some sort of Running Gag).
- Susan Olsen, who played Cindy on The Brady Bunch, has revealed that fans are often surprised to learn that she's still alive, thinking she died of a drug overdose at age 18. Those people, of course, have her confused with the tragic Anissa Jones, who played Buffy on Family Affair, because both girls sported blonde sausage curl pigtails (Cindy's hairstyle was inspired by Buffy's, at 7-year-old Olsen's own request).
- Jay Leno was falsely reported dead in April 2019. However, the article reporting his "death" got his year of birth and age wrong. (1949 instead of 1950, 71 instead of 68.)
- On July 26, 2022, a post from the wife of Leave It to Beaver star Tony Dow (who played Wally Cleaver) to social media reported that Dow had passed away from complications of liver cancer (which had been announced two months earlier); with the post being shared by others he knew, including co-star Jerry Mathers (who played the title character) and eventually being picked up by the media. Later that afternoon, Dow's son posted a follow-up message that Dow was still alive but receiving hospice care. Tony Dow really did pass away the next day.
- Bizarrely inverted in 2015 by the British children's TV art presenter Tony Hart (roughly the British equivalent of Bob Ross, for American readers), who was mourned as newly dead on social media after a single Tweet blew up and got him trending. In fact, he had died five years earlier and people had either forgotten he was dead or not seen the news at the time. His daughter subsequently commented that at least the mix-up had shown her that people still cared about him.
- This happened to Justin Bieber in 2023 when a report began circulating on social media that he was killed in a car crash - and was very quickly debunked.
- During the mid-1970s, a rumor floated around that TV series Soul Train's host Don Cornelius had died of a drug overdose, prompting him to make an announcement at the beginning of a subsequent episode that he had not died of a drug overdose and his attorneys were trying to find whoever had spread that slander. This also counts as a Suspiciously Specific Denial because while Cornelius had carefully stated he did not die of a drug overdose, he never stated that he hadn't used drugs. Cornelius died for real in 2012.
- English singer Ernest Lough is best-known as the boy soprano who recorded Felix Mendelssohn's "Hear My Prayer" for HMV in 1927. His singing in that recording was so beautiful that a legend grew up that he had died after singing the last note. (For the record, Lough actually died in 2000 at the age of 88).
- In March 2025, Bulgarian football club Arda Kardzhali were informed that former player Petko Ganchev had died aged 78, and held a minute's silence in his honor prior to a match against Levski Sofia. Ganchev was not only alive but actually present at the match, though he arrived late and missed the minute's silence; he didn't find out what had happened until he got home to find his wife in floods of tears, by which time Arda had already realised the mistake themselves and issued a retraction.
- The actress Shirley Eaton was rumored to have died during the production of Goldfinger when the character she played was painted with gold. Eaton herself appeared in a 2003 episode of MythBusters when Adam and Jamie tested whether or not one could die from being covered in gold paint.
