Note: As a Death Trope, all Spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.
Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated in Fan Works.
Crossovers
- In 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.
- In 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.
- In 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.
- Both Sky-Byte and Jetfire were thought to be dead in Transformers: MHA after they were last seen fighting each other near an exploding supernova. So 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!
- 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.
- In All You Need Is Love L isn't dead but the computer thinks he is.
- Varric, in the Twice Upon an Age 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.
- In 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.
- One of the several things that sets the plot in motion in Fire Emblem: Three Houses: Fifth Path 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):
- Vivienne Graham is believed by Monarch and by humanity at large to be dead after she was Swallowed Whole by Ghidorah in Antarctica but was actually Only Mostly Dead and has been reborn as part of the Two Beings, One Body Titan Monster X. It isn't until several chapters in that Monarch becomes aware of her fate, and the public remains in the dark about it for longer.
- 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.
- In 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.
- In 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.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
- Used as a Running Gag in JUST THE BEST MARY SUE, EVER!, 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."
- Inverted in Reparations. 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.
- In 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.
- 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.
- 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.
