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Back from the Dead

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Wise Fwom Youw Gwave!
Bart Simpson: Ralph! I thought you were dead?
Ralph Wiggum: Nope.
— The Simpsons, "Simpsons Bible Stories"

A major character, possibly even a popularly nasty Big Bad, has been killed, pronounced dead and buried. However, the established laws of the universe allow for Functional Magic, a Sufficiently Advanced Alien, Applied Phlebotinum, Deus ex Machina or similar agency to intervene and subvert what naturally follows dying. Namely, staying dead. (In some cases, an explanation isn't even bothered with.)

Maybe the writers were running short of new ideas and decided to recycle some old characters. Maybe the actor has recently acquired some indecent photographs of the producers. Maybe the new writer was devastated his predecessor killed the character. Who knows? He is now Back From the Dead!

The form of afterlife can vary pretty widely. They may "simply" be resurrected or reincarnated (usually as a sentient pet animal), physical or mental alterations (good or bad) optional; or we may now have a ghost, vampire, zombie, angel, godling, demon, haunted car... okay, that last one will be hard to top (except with a Love-matic Grandpa!). Bringing someone back from the dead by supernatural means is generally treated as being a negative thing because of how unnatural it is.

If a character cannot come back from the dead entirely, they may show up as a Spirit Advisor or Mentor Archetype, letting them be literally dead, but allowing them to interact with the living.

In the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Mortal Coil", Neelix actually dies for real but is (some would argue unfortunately) brought back to life some 18 hours later. This is an example of Contractual Immortality. In order to qualify for being brought Back From The Dead, a character in a TV show would have to be still dead at the end of one episode and resurrected, by whatever means, in a later episode (2-parters don't count).

This is exceedingly common in American superhero comic books, to the point that whenever a popular character dies, it's a given that they'll be back within no more than five years. At one time, it was said that "Nobody ever stays dead in comics, except Bucky, Uncle Ben and Jason Todd." Naturally, since that phrase was coined, Bucky and Jason Todd have both been recalled to life.

See Death Is Cheap for when this becomes a regular feature of a 'verse, Sorting Algorithm of Deadness for the odds a particular death will stick, and the accompanying betting pool for which modern Lazarus is due back next. See also Resurrective Immortality for where this is an everyday part of a character's life.

A general rule of thumb is that if you Never Found the Body, the character is Not Quite Dead in the first place (and therefore not a candidate for this trope). One of the most common examples of this is that if a character falls off of a cliff or other high structure, especially into water, they're almost guaranteed to still be alive; see Disney Death. An explosion gives more reasonable odds. Of course, even if you've see the body and you've atomized it so finely that each individual molecule is a galaxy apart... there's always Time Travel. Removing the entire thing from existence can be done, and equally undone by a similar Deus ex Machina. A Mistaken Death Confirmation will result if another character either fails to find life signs or sees the character's fatal injury.

Faking the Dead has its own trope. See also First-Episode Resurrection when this happens at the start of the series.

The character's resurrection from the dead could result in a situation of Unwanted Revival.

Real life examples are not included here; while people thought to be dead — and even legally or medically "declared" dead — have occasionally been revealed to be alive, or been resuscitated by a pioneering new medical technique, that just means they were never really dead to begin with. Resurrections described in religious texts should go in the "religion" section for the avoidance of argument, while reincarnation has its own page.

As a Death Trope, all Spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Advertising 
  • Allegedly, Pepsi can bring your ancestors back from the dead.
  • According to a Super Bowl commercial, so can Doritos.
  • The Priceline Negotiator went down in a fiery explosion but somehow managed to come back.
  • A 2001 commercial for Leon's (a Canadian furniture store chain) has an elderly woman dying in her bed as she is surrounded by her grieving family. After her soul departs from her body and is about to descend to Heaven, she looks around at her family and then at the nice furniture pieces she is leaving behind. She thinks for a moment about having to leave behind the furniture and a few seconds later, she lets out a huge gasp and awakens, which shocks her family. Except for her would-be widower, who lets out a "Whoo-hoo!" in response.

    Asian Animation 

    Comic Strips 
  • Pruneface made his first appearance in Dick Tracy as a Nazi sympathizer. He apparently froze to death being pursued by Tracy but was preserved by Dr. Freezdrei and revived in 1983. The trope is subverted in 1999 when Pruneface falls to his death from a mountain cable car.
  • It is no secret that the creator of Little Orphan Annie, Harold Gray, hated FDR and the New Deal, and often went out of his way to let readers know this. When FDR was re-elected in 1944, Gray got so depressed, he had Daddy Warbucks, the personification of free-market capitalism, Killed Off for Real, dying in despair. When FDR died in 1945, Gray was so overjoyed he had Warbucks brought back, because America was worth living in again.
  • Played for Laughs in one Popeye comic where George Geezil, one of Popeye's acquaintances with a notorious hatred for Wimpy, actually poisons Wimpy's dinner. When a doctor pronounces Wimpy dead, Geezil declares that he'll buy everyone in the establishment a hamburger. Wimpy promptly gets back up saying he'll take his with pickles, onions and lettuce.

    Fairy Tales 

    Films — Animation 
  • Frollo invokes this to Phoebus in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, after the latter was struck down by an arrow and fell into the river earlier for defying his orders - and then found alive in the Court of Miracles.
  • The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat, the 1974 sequel to the 1972 animated adaptation of Robert Crumb's underground comic, depicts several scenarios in which the title character ends up dying in one way or another, although most of these seem to be hallucinations. Crumb killed off the character in the comic "Fritz the Cat, Superstar", released in response to the film in 1972.
  • Flynn Rider/Eugene Fitzherbert from Tangled. From the time that he says in the opening, "This is the story of how I died," it only leaves the viewer guessing until the climatic part, when he is fatally stabbed In the Back by Mother Gothel's dagger and, rather than let Rapunzel risk her freedom for his life, cuts off her hair with a broken mirror shard in a Heroic Sacrifice before breathing his last in her arms. Thankfully, Rapunzel's magic tear brings him back to life. This is justified, since in the original tale, Rapunzel healed her beloved prince's eyesight with her tear.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Ripley in Alien: Resurrection (it's in the title, even), through the miracle of cloning.
    Distephano: I thought you were dead.
    Ripley: Yeah, I get that a lot.
  • J.A.R.V.I.S., somewhat in Avengers: Age of Ultron. The original program appears to be torn apart by Ultron so he could escape during the Avengers' party, but was in fact hiding, preventing Ultron from accessing nuclear launch codes. He is then used as the basis of The Vision's programming.
  • Casper Dr. James Harvey falls into a manhole while intoxicated. After returning to Whipstaff Manor as a ghost, his daughter Kat and Casper resurrect him with a machine Casper's dad invented called The Lazarus.
  • Rebel Leader Karakol in City of Craftspeople. And he even isn't a hunchback anymore...
  • Io in Clash of the Titans. Because Zeus said so.
  • The Dark Crystal: In the climax, Kira is stabbed by skekZok the Ritual-Master after throwing the shard of the Crystal to Jen and dies. She is then revived by the urSkeks after Jen restores the Crystal.
  • Dragonslayer: Ulrich is raised by Galen near the end of the film to destroy the dragon. He had prepared for this all along by putting his soul into the amulet.
  • Flash Gordon. The title character, after being executed by poison gas. He's saved by a doctor's injection he received beforehand, though Princess Aura pretends that she revived him with a kiss.
  • Ghosts of War: The soldiers think they can stop the Helwigs haunting the chateau if they locate the bodies and give them a proper burial, which they do. Then it's revealed that doing so actually brought them back to life to attack the soldiers directly. Subverted, as the events of the movie are inside a computer simulation.
  • Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack! has the original 1954 Godzilla resurrected by the vengeful spirits of the forgotten soldiers who died in WWII.
  • This happens to most of the villains in the Slasher genre:
  • Ice Cream Man: The cancelled sequel would have had Gregory Tudor somehow back alive as an elderly man.
  • Kamen Rider, Sentai's Super Hero Time partner, does this in their films as well. Like Sentai, it is more likely to happen when crossovers are involved.
  • Kamen Rider x Super Sentai: Super Hero Taisen, the first big theatrical crossover between the Kamen Rider and Super Sentai franchises, features the return of Dai-Shocker from Kamen Rider Decade, an alliance of revived villains who fought the various Kamen Riders, as well as the introduction of Dai-Zangyack, Super Sentai's equivalent of Dai-Shocker consisting of baddies from across Sentai history (though admittedly Dai-Zangyack's range of villains is far less diverse than Dai-Shocker, while the latter indeed has many villains from both the Showa and Heisei eras, Dai-Zangyack mostly has villains from the past few years and only two Showa villains, though it helps that one of them (Rider (nee Bio) Hunter Silva) becomes the top dog of Dai-Zangyack. Every single villain in this movie, whether they are from Dai-Shocker or Dai-Zangyack, has been brought back from the dead (with the exception of Dai-Shocker's Doktor G, since he's actually Narutaki in disguise, also not counted is Kamen Rider Diend, who is just an Anti-Hero who decided to be a dick at the end).
    • An interesting case occurs when Joe and Don with Daiki and Hina travel via the DenLiner to 1976, the days of Himitsu Sentai Gorenger, where they encounter Baseball Mask, the Monster of the Week of Gorenger #53, witnessing his destruction at the hands of Akaranger (actually Captain Marvelous in disguise). This is not a depiction of his original demise, so he must have been brought back to be killed a second time.
  • In The King of Kings, Jesus does a big favor for Lazarus, and then does this to himself.
  • In The Last Witch Hunter, the very basis of the plot is the Witch Queen doing this.
  • The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen offers a double whammy of this, although one is only suggested, presumably as a setup for a sequel that never got made. First, the villain of the movie turns out to be Professor Moriarty, nemesis of Sherlock Holmes, who everybody thought got killed at Reichenbach Falls a few years before the time of the film. Then, at the absolute end of the movie, a witch doctor is performing a ritual at the grave of Allan Quartermain, the League's leader, and the skies darken and the ground trembles. This was the supposed sequel set-up.
  • In Mad Max: Fury Road, the Big Bad, Immortan Joe, tells his followers that this happened to him to ensure their fantatical devotion to him as a divine figure. His War Boys have the belief that he has the power to take them to the Warrior Heaven of Valhalla if they "die historic" for him.
  • In addition to the title undead, The Mummy Returns has an instance of a character, Evie, being brought Back from the Dead thanks to her son's ability to read ancient Egyptian.
  • Mythica: Szorlok raises the dead to serve him as zombies. In a more positive version, Teela raises Thane from the underworld after he and Dagen kill themselves to get the Hammer of Tek from there.
  • In Ordet, Johannes, who believes himself an agent of God, insists that he can resurrect his recently deceased sister-in-law Inger, if anyone in the family truly believes and asks. When Inger's daughter asks him to, he does.
  • Parking (1985) starts with Orpheus dying before his time due to a clerical error. Once it's fixed, he's promptly sent back to the world of the living.
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: Barbossa at the end of the second film after Jack killed him at the end of the first film, then Jack himself in the third film after being eaten by the Kraken at the end of the second. Will also comes back from his death. The fifth film has Salazar, who dies when his ship wrecks in a cave, only to be brought back to undeath by a curse. Near the end of the film, the Trident of Poseidon lifts all curses, including Salazar's, bringing him fully back as human. Then he's killed by Barbossa's Heroic Sacrifice.
  • Replicas: William manages to revive his family using their copied minds and cloned bodies. Near the end he also revives Jones.
  • Rise: Blood Hunter: Sadie is revived in the morgue after she's been murdered and made into a vampire. After she gets killed (at her request) again Sadie once more wakes up there.
  • In The Rise of Skywalker Palpatine resurrected by transferring his spirit into the body of a clone. Rey is also resurrected by Kylo Ren with Force healing, at the cost of his life.
  • Rise of the Scarecrows: The Scary Scarecrows out in the woods are construction workers Sheriff Howard killed some years ago, come back to life.note 
  • RoboCop (1987): The basic plot revolves around a murdered police officer who is resurrected For Science!, but begins to remember who he was before he was cyberized.
  • Subverted in Sherlock Holmes (2009). Lord Blackwood, after being hanged and declared dead by Dr Watson, comes back from the dead and wreaking fear and panic all across England. Turns out he had actually faked his death.
  • Lampshaded in Soapdish, in which the assistant producer wants to irritate the main star so badly that she'll quit (so the second banana "actress" will sleep with him), so he decides to bring back an actor the main star didn't like who was killed 20 years earlier. The head writer, played by Whoopi Goldberg, points out that they can't bring him back, he was killed off in a spectacularly grisly fashion:
    The guy was killed in an auto accident! I looked it up! He was driving in the Yukon, in a pink convertible, to visit his brother who's an ex-con named Francis, when a tractor trailer comes along and decapitates him! You know what that means!? It means he doesn't have a head! How am I suppose to write for a guy who doesn't have a head?! He's got no lips, no vocal cords! What do you want me to do!?
  • Spirited (2022): The Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future each have the option of a retirement package which includes a gold watch, a gift card, and a chance to be brought back to life. Present takes his retirement package late in the movie.
  • Splatter: Johnny Splatter managed to be revived as some kind of ghoul thanks to some Hollywood Voodoo. He can also do this to Krule.
  • Stargate: Ra has a kind of medical "coffin" capable of reviving people recently deceased (and presumably it's also the source of his immortality, as he's been alive for over ten thousand years).
  • Spock died in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, but came Back from the Dead two years later in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. Lampshaded by Spock himself in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country:
    Spock: She doesn't know... [after mind-melding with Lt. Valeris]
    Scotty: Then we're dead.
    Spock: I've been dead before.
  • Star Trek: Generations had Kirk presumed dead at the beginning of the film and then brought back nearly 80 years later only to be Killed Off for Real. This incident ended up naming another trope.
  • Commonly happens with defeated villains in Super Sentai movies, usually in the Vs. teamups.
  • In Tamara, Tamara returns from the dead following a Deadly Prank because a magic spell Gone Horribly Right.
  • Thelma: Thelma raises a dead bird from the dead, and later also restores Anja, who she vanished earlier.
  • Tickles the Clown: Van Helsing is cloned back to life at the end of the movie.
  • In the J-Horror film Tomie Vs Tomie, Tomie was reborn in a disturbingly gruesome way when the male protagonist consumed his girlfriend's ashes out of deep love and Tomie regenerated within his stomach and climbed out of his belly, killing him.
  • Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen has it happen thrice in the same movie. First with Megatron, who died at the end of the first movie. Then with Optimus Prime, who is killed after fighting Megatron, Starscream and Grindor and Megatron stabs (and blasts) him from behind. He is resurrected later so he can go kick The Fallen's ass. Then Sam, who temporarily goes to robot heaven, so he can save Optimus.
  • Parodied in The Truman Show, in which Truman's "father" — who was long ago written out of Truman's "life" — has become such a pest in trying to get himself back onto the show that he's even managed to get Truman questioning the nature of his reality, thus forcing the producers to write him back into the show. When questioned as to how they intend to explain away the fact that he is now back, the director — obviously winging it — blurts out "Amnesia."
  • In X-Men: Days of Future Past, thanks to Cosmic Retcon, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Storm, Beast, Iceman, Colossus and presumably everyone else we see killed in the Bad Future didn't die. However anyone killed before the retcon kicked off in the 70s (and between the films) was Killed Off for Real. Sorry Azazel, Banshee, and Emma Frost.

    Music 
  • Blaze Ya Dead Homie, according to his lyrics, is a reincarnated gangsta rapper from the 1980s, which is why much of his music sounds like late-1980s gangsta rap.
  • Insane Clown Posse refers to this a number of times, including the song "12" and a brief reference in "Piggie Pie" ("Axe in hand / I rose from the dead")
  • The premise of the Schoolyard Heroes song "Cat Killer"
    Well I don't know what you think
    I think I know how this ends
    I saw this in a movie once
    While hanging with sofa friends
    A pet dies and comes back to life
    He gets gross as he kills everything in sight
  • Skillet even performed a song title this.
  • In The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny, Abraham Lincoln does this in order to fight Batman.
  • "He's Not Here", the song near the end of !HERO: The Rock Opera.
  • The song "Dead Man's Hand" by Lord Huron is about a corpse that simply gets up and walks away into the desert.
    I laid him down in a grave in the sand
    And he grabbed my arm with his dead man's hand
    He said: "I know I'm dead but I don't wanna lie
    In a grave out here where the coyote's cry
    I stared right into the endless void
    And I ain't going back if I got any choice
    I know how to live, I don't know how to die
    And there ain't no thrills in the afterlife.
    • Another Lord Huron song, "The World Ender", is written from the perspective of a character who has returned from death to avenge their own apparent murder.
  • The resurrection of Jesus is a very popular theme in Christian music, from hymns such as "Jesus Christ Is Risen Today" to more contemporary songs like Don Francisco's "He's Alive," famously covered by Dolly Parton.
  • The Spanish-language children's song "Señor Don Gato," which was popular in elementary-school music classes for decades due to its English translation by Margaret Marks. The song is about a cat who is so excited when his girlfriend promises to marry him that he falls off a rooftop and dies from his injuries. On the day of his funeral, as the procession passes through a marketplace, the scent of fish is so strong that it brings Don Gato back to life.
  • Nautilus Pompilius:
    • The song "Mother of Gods" has words:
      I was born a hundred times and died a hundred times,
      I looked at the cards — the devil has no
      Trumps. They enter our house, but what
      Will they do to us? You and I are immortal!
    • In the song "This Music will Last Forever", the return of the moon to the sky and the resumption of music after changing the battery on the player is described in a similar way to the scenes of the resurrection of people.
    • In the song "Transformation", the lyrical hero believes he will be able to return to life after losing his heart, ears, hands, stomach and head. In his opinion, he even needs to get rid of his organs in order to live longer.
    • The song "Tutankhamun" implies that by the words:
      I knew a woman,
      She always went out the window.
      The house had ten thousand doors,
      But she went out the window.
      She was falling to her death,
      But she didn't care.
    • The song "Walking on the Water" implies that Jesus came back to life and resurrected some other people.

    Myths & Religion 
  • The Bible has several:
    • Jesus, the one that everyone knows even if they're only Theme Park Scholars.
    • Lazarus, resurrected by Jesus.
      • Also the widow's son at Nain and Jairus' daughter
    • In Book of Ezekiel 37:1-3, Ezekiel is shown a vision of an army brought back to life with just their scattered bones for a starting point.
    • In Books of Kings, the prophet Elijah performed one to a widow's child when the latter fell ill, and Elisha did two, one is the son of a Shunammite woman and the other one is done posthumously by having a corpse touched onto the bones of Elisha.
    • According to the Book of Revelation, this will happen with everyone after The End of the World as We Know It.
    • There is also the Beast (some interpret it as something close to the trope definition of The Antichrist, not simply those who refused to follow Jesus's teaching) in the Book of Revelation, who is "slain by the sword", yet is resurrected through the power of Satan and then cons all non-Christians into worshiping him.
    • According to Matthew 27:51–53, "many saints" rose from the dead, climbed out of their tombs, and wandered around in Jerusalem. The gospel doesn't say what happened to the risen dead after this.
    • In Acts 9, a woman named Dorcas (or Tabitha depending on the translation) is brought back from the dead by Peter.
  • Prior to this, and possibly the Trope Maker, was Zoroastrianism, which also says there will be a Mass Resurrection after the end comes when the dead are judged. After the Babylonian exile, some Jews also began to believe in this, possibly influenced by Zoroastrian belief as they had been liberated from captivity by the Persians.
  • Dionysus (known to the Romans as Bacchus) from Classical Mythology pulls this one off as a baby in the Cretan version of the myth (which has Dionysus as the son of Zeus and Persephone, not Semele). Hera sends the Titans to kill Dionysus as a baby, which they do, eating all but his heart. Zeus plants the heart in Semele's womb, where it grows back into the infant Dionysus.
  • In Norse Mythology, Balder and his blind brother Hod — who were both killed prior to the events of Ragnarok — will be resurrected After the End.
  • In Classical Mythology, before Sisyphus 'died', he told his wife not to do any burial rites. Then, when in the Underworld, he appealed to the queen of the underworld, Persephone, and asked if he could go back up to earth to haunt his wife for not giving him the proper rites. She agreed and he came back from the dead.
  • The god Osiris in Egyptian Mythology. He was killed and dismembered by Seth and the parts of his corpse were scattered all over the world. Then Osiris's wife Isis gathered the parts of her husband and resurrected him.
  • St. Nicholas of Myra (the basis for Santa Claus) is the patron saint of children due to this trope. During a famine in Turkey, a shop keeper murdered three young boys, cut their bodies up and stored them in the brine of a pickle barrel intending to sell their meat to his customers. Later, when he tried serving some of the meat to St. Nicholas, Nicholas recognized what it was. He then proceeded to draw out the three boys from the barrel, whole and alive. This is similar to an earlier Greek myth where Tantalus served up his son to the gods who were his dinner guests, but they instantly knew it was human meat and raised the boy from the dead. In the underworld, Tantalus's punishment was to spend eternity standing with water up to his neck and grapes just over. He was always hungry and thirsty, but seeking to get either made them vanish. This the word "tantalizing".

    Pinball 

    Podcasts 
  • Being a D&D-based podcast, this is a regular occurrence on Gays in Capes. Tanum, Meekus, Lia, and Joaquin all pull this — and that's just Season 1.
  • In Interstitial: Actual Play, Edith has a move that can accomplish this and she uses it on Larxene, though we don't see the results until several episodes after her initial death. This also occurs with Roxanne, as her death leads to the restoration of her Somebody Ennora.

    Pro Wrestling 
  • Until his retirement in 2020, The Undertaker had been "killed" and brought back to life Lord know how many times in the 30 years he'd been around.
  • The WWE's attempted "Who killed Mr. McMahon?" storyline in 2007 — Vince McMahon being trapped inside his limousine at the end of an episode of WWE Raw and the initial playing out of things as though he had legitimately died — was aborted out of necessity due to the real-life events surrounding the death of Chris Benoit, as McMahon appeared (very much alive) on camera to explain the situation and that he was indeed in a storyline. Several weeks later, a shortcut storyline to give some plausible closure to things (he faked his death) was played out.
  • CHIKARA: This was how UltraMantis Black would explain Blind Rage's returns from his various retirements.
    • Another Mantis example. He was the captain of The Arcane Horde (himself/The Batiri (Obariyon and Kodama)/Oleg The Usurper) in the Challenge Of The Immortals tournament in 2015. He had to retire due to leg injuries in September 2015, leading to him bringing back Obariyon and Kodama's teammate Kobald, in the storyline, back from the dead.note 
  • In April 2018, Joey Ryan was "killed" on an episode of The Young Bucks' Being the Elite. Soon thereafter, Being the Elite revealed that "Hangman" Adam Page was behind the "killing", and showed a "funeral" for Ryan which put great emphasis on his... manhood. Fast forward to the All In event that September, when Page defeated Joey Janela in a Chicago Street Fight. Down go the house lights... and a video of a, um, fully erect Ryan is shown... followed by eight men simulating The Undertaker's druids, wearing inflatable penis costumes, walking on stage. Enter a fully alive Joey Ryan, who runs into the ring and proceeds to lay Page to waste, capped off by a superkick. Page is carried out of the ring by the "dick druids", capping off a hilarious parody of Resurrection Revenge.

    Radio 
  • Just as Douglas Adams killed a bunch of characters in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a radio play pulled a very big Back from the Dead: the series' multiverse.

    Roleplay 
  • In Darwin's Soldiers, the Dragonstorm Big Bad was found dead in the first RP. He later reappears in the sequel, with the explanation that the first one was a body double.
  • In The Gamer's Alliance, a few prominent villains and heroes have returned to life. The most notable ones are Drishnek, Jemuel, Leon and the Silverbranch brothers.
  • In The Gungan Council, characters are frequently brought back to life since Death Is Cheap. Even Kyp and Bane, who both spent a long time dead, were resurrected through some means.
  • The Mad Scientist Wars: Andrew Tinker pulls this way back in the Redneck war. So It Begins, thanks to a series of backup personality copies and god cloning, pulled this off a LOT, and David was not just killed, but erased from his own body by his evil sentient mechanical Arm. He ends up making a case for his own existence, and makes it back. Also, Erik Tinker makes a deal with the devil. Sadly, the man he died killing, one of the most dangerous men ever, may well be back too....
    • Subverted with Sayasuke, a.k.a. "the Saya demon", who was never technically alive before he died. He won an award for cheating death regardless.
  • Projection Quest: Taylor gains this ability from Emmy as Yukari as an application of Onmyodo, although it only works on Parahumans and particularly traumatized people. She uses it to resurrect the recently deceased Miss Militia and Dauntless as well as Fleur.

    Tabletop Games 
  • As in many Tabletop Games trends, Dungeons & Dragons popularized death as a minor setback by giving players access to the Raise Dead and Resurrection spells. Many other tabletop games follow suit. Fourth Edition takes the cake, giving higher level characters abilities whose descriptions start with "Once per day, when you die..."
  • While D&D has its share of resurrections, Manshoon of the Forgotten Realms invented a new one. His unique Stasis Clone spell ensured his continuous existence despite insufficient caution. That is, as long as he cared to steer clear of the few people who have the power to strip him of this convenience.
  • This is generally how Abyssals get Exalted: their Deathlord comes to them on their deathbed and offers them a second chance at life. Thing is, most of them aren't told what that second chance entails...
    • That is, the Abyssal Exalted have never actually died. The Exaltation does not bring them back from the dead, but keeps them from dying. In Exalted, there is no resurrection.
    • Following on from that, when someone tries resurrecting the dead, they occasionally draw the attention of the Dark Mother, who sees fit to grant the corpse a new life as one of the Liminal Exalted. Again, this isn't true resurrection, as the Liminal is, to all intents and purposes, a new person using someone else's vacated body.

  • Interstitial: Our Hearts Intertwined gives characters the option to come back after their Harm Clock is filled at the cost of losing their playbooks, their Links, or owing a favour to a dark force. The move "I'm Sorry About the Ice Cream" from The Friend playbook also allows this if the player is willing, though on a mixed success the resurrection is delayed and the character has forgotten something important.
  • In Ironclaw the "Lazarus Heart" spell, the most advanced and difficult form of White Magic, has a chance of being able to revive the dead. Though it works better on a character who is merely "dying", and becomes more difficult with every hour that one is dead.
  • Magic: The Gathering has this as a specialty of Black aligned abilities, and to a lesser extent White as well. The main difference being that White's resurrection abilities are usually associated with Angels somehow, and only affect your dead creatures, whereas black can resurrect its opponent's dead creatures as well, and is typically flavoured towards Zombification.
  • In the Old World of Darkness, mummies are guaranteed to come back to life no matter what, though they can be truly killed via extreme measures, such as nuking them.
    • The Gurahl werebears of Werewolf: The Apocalypse have a Gift that allows them to resurrect a recently dead shapeshifter. They also have a rite that gives them the chance to bring any deceased back to life — but in order to do so, they have to fight their incarnation of Death.
    • And similarly to the nWoD, a substantial number of oWoD characters are undead of one form or another.
    • There are also cases where it looks like someone's come back from the dead, but in reality another spirit is now animating the body, as with the hsien of Changeling: The Dreaming and the Fallen of Demon: The Fallen.
  • In Promethean: The Created, it's possible for the titular Prometheans to come back from the dead once if their Azoth is high enough. The Osirans actually have the special ability to come back multiple times, but they have to buy the ability up again with experience points once it's used — other lineages can also buy this ability, but it's more expensive for them. Said ability can also be used to revive others... but it's costly, and gets more costly each time you bring someone back from the dead after the first.
    • Also in the New World of Darkness, there are the Sin-Eaters from Geist: The Sin-Eaters, whose characters start by coming back from death. Even if you destroy their bodies after you kill them, they COME BACK. They just won't stay dead. Every time they come back, they become more and more insane, and somebody else dies a horrible death in their place to keep the balance.
    • A substantial portion of World of Darkness characters are undead, so...
    • And then we have one of the Malleus Maleficarum's Benedictions from Hunter: The Vigil. Boon of Lazarus allows you to raise someone from the dead. Unlike the Promethean example above, they are restored to fully human status. Unlike the Geist example above, no one will die to balance Death's books. In a setting where most deaths are supposedly final, this is the only true resurrection power. That said, dying is a traumatic experience regardless, and the resurrectee would gain a derangement as a result.
    • The Arisen of Mummy: The Curse have a form of resurrective immortality which means that while they'll always die, one way or another, they'll always resurrect. Even destroying their body won't work, since their spirit can be called back into a new body.
    • The Unchained in Demon: The Descent have the ability to resurrect dead humans as an Exploit. Unlike the Malleus Maleficarum version, the penalty isn't going crazy; the recipient becomes a stigmatic.
  • In Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom, Hades offers several villains this in exchange for their help in taking over the Magic Kingdom.
  • Broadly speaking, death is final Warhammer 40,000, but a handful of beings have come back over the years.
    • Old canon, now demoted to being one theory about the origin of the God-Emperor of Mankind is that he was born when thousands of human shamans ritually committed suicide to reincarnate in a single human as means to protect themselves from the afterlife. Ever since,he has led many many lives, possibly including Jesus, though there's much stronger evidence that he was Saint George. It's even up in the air if the Emperor will resurrect if he ever finally dies, as a man or as a god, or if he'll just snuff out.
    • Imperial Living Saints, the Emperor's rough equivalent of a daemon prince, are people canonized as Saints in the Imperial Church and have been resurrected when the Imperium needs them most. They even have a gameplay mechanic for coming back from the dead.
    • The Perpetuals are incredibly rare beings who will continue being resurrecting unless killed by an incredibly powerful force capable of destroying the soul.
    • The Craftworld Eldar, whodon't have a pleasant afterlife to look forward to, play a variant in which they use spirit stones to capture their spirits upon death, which will later be added to the Craftworld's Infinity Circuit to serve as an ersatz afterlife. Occasionally, in a time of great need, a soul will be drawn out and placed into a vehicle or a robotic body and serve as a warmachine or heavy shock troops. These machines carry a high level of reverence, and it's been implied that the process is irreversible and the spirit will be unrecoverable should they fail.
    • The Dark Eldar Haemonculi are so good at fleshcrafting they can bring themselves (and others, for a price) back from the dead. Unfortunately, it's not guaranteed to work nor risk free. One notorious haemonculus has gotten so addicted to the experience that he is now completely batshit insane (not that anyone notices, in 40K it just makes them better).
    • Yvraine, Emissary of Ynnead, was killed by a priestess of the crone goddess Morai-Heg while fighting in the Crucibael, the greatest of Commorragh’s arenas. Having died at almost the exact moment that Eldrad Ulthran’s ritual to awaken Ynnead failed however, the God of the Dead was able to bring Yvraine back to life and granted her a measure of his power.
    • Kharn the Betrayer was once impaled and left for dead. When he was recovered, he was presumed dead but survived to make a full recovery. It's unclear whether he was just that tough or was brought back by his patron god Khorne so he could continue spilling blood and taking skulls.
    • Lucius the Eternal was singled out by his god for being so twisted and depraved that he was blessed by his god Slaanesh. Every time he is killed in combat, if the enemy takes even a little pride in killing him, Lucius's soul will overtake him and he'll transform into the newly resurrected Lucius. Even if that means a normal human or an alien, they'll slowly transform into the hideously scarred, power-armoured giant, and what's left of the original becomes another face on Lucius's armor.
    • A few select champions of Chaos who have pleased their masters in life have been promoted to Daemon Prince posthumously, effectively resurrecting them, though life and death don't quite mean as much when the fabric of their being is changed over to psychic energy. M'kar was one case who originated from the Horus Heresy, a woman named Emeli who had been a mere cult leader was a more recent case.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!:
    • Noble Knight Gwalchavad can bring a Noble Knight back from the Graveyard to your hand. And Sacred Noble Knight of King Artorigus can revive one of his Knights when he goes from the field to the Graveyard.
    • Evigishki Zealgigas is Steelswarm Hercules brought back with a Gishki ritual.
    • Whenever the Madolche die, they are shuffled back into the deck instead. (The Madolche Chateau Field Spell improves this ability, returning their cards to the player's hand instead.) This indicates their Sugar Bowl nature.
    • Tri-Wight, which shows three Skull Servants crawling out of the grave to fight again. It is supposed to show that death is not a permanent thing for them.

    Theatre 
  • A fallen knight returning to life is a common feature of Mummers plays, usually with the aid of a miraculous cure-all.
  • Alcestis, in the Euripides play named after her.
  • The Addams Family Musical makes this a regular occasion, with the Addams Family ancestors rising annually for a family reunion and gala. Normally, Gomez dismisses them back to their graves at the end of the night's festivities, but this year, Uncle Fester traps them in the material plane and enlists their help.
  • The plot of Ride the Cyclone follows six high school choir members as they die in a tragic roller coaster accident at a Crappy Carnival. Arriving in limbo, they are greeted by the amusement park's mechanical Fortune Teller — The Amazing Karnark — who offers them the chance to return to life. The catch is he can only send one of them back to the realm of the living, and the group must decide by unanimous vote who gets to return to life.

    Toys 
  • In the BIONICLE web-serial The Powers That Be, Kopaka and Pohatu, whilst being trapped on the Red Star, run into Mavrah, a character who's canonically been dead for over a millenia. It was later revealed that all characters that had died in the Matoran Universe were living up there.
    • Really almost all Bionicle characters who die heroically do this somehow. Jaller and Takanuva both during Mask of Light. Mata-Nui coming back inside the Mask of Life at the end of the series following his fight with Makuta. Ekimu being re-awakened from thousands of years of death like slumber in the 2015 reboot. The only major exception to this is Matoro, who is never revived after using the Mask of Life to save the Great Spirit Robot's life during the Ignition saga.

    Visual Novels 
  • Nasuverse:
    • Kotomine Kirei is still around in Fate/stay night, even though he 'died' at the end of Fate/Zero (a prequel).
    • Shirou dies in Heaven's Feel ending, but is revived by Ilya via Third Sorcery in the True End.
  • If certain actions are taken in Spirit Hunter: NG, then Rosé will appear in the Bad End despite being killed by a spirit earlier in the game. This is because she's a spirit herself, and was able to resurrect herself after being destroyed.
  • In Slay the Princess, after every ending other than the "Good Ending", you come back for a Chapter II, where the Princess and the cabin have changed depending on what happened in the basement during Chapter I. The princess also comes back to life in most of the endings where she's been killed, and responds accordingly. The only endings in which the Princess stays dead are Good Ending and The Spectre, the latter of which sees the Princess still dead but risen as a snarky ghost.
  • Trapped with Jester: The POV character wakes up to a foreign voice asking whether they're alive or still dead. Jester may grant back the protagonist's memories which reveal that they have died at their family's hands.
  • Tsukihime:
    • The main story begins with protagonist Shiki Tohno being seized by an inexplicable urge to stalk and murder a woman he happened to pass by on the street, via cutting her into seventeen pieces. He is understandably dismayed when Arcueid shows up the next day complaining about how much power it took to revive herself.
    • Over the course of the semi-sequel Kagetsu Tohya Shiki can end up in a number of what would normally be bad ends, some of which are death such as being eaten by a jaguar that comes out of Arcueid's underwear drawer. Yes, really. However, the next day, he's always okay again because Len is constantly reviving him. Possibly a subversion though as these 'deaths' are not actually the real death of his body, though some scenarios seem as though they would genuinely end with Shiki dead, dream or no.

    Web Animation 
  • DSBT InsaniT: Played for Laughs with Balloon. He is always being killed and just coming back, usually with no explanation whatsoever.
    • Angel has the power to revive the recently deceased, which is something she doesn't like to do.
  • In The Frollo Show, Frollo dies a total of four times but always come back, though his first two deaths have been retconned. Others characters have resurrected in this series.
  • Homestar Runner: Homsar was INVENTED just to die in one of the early sbemails. Then for some reason... he comes back. We never know quite how. It's implied that the Heavy Lourde only hospitalised him, as in one Marzipan's Answering Machine message he thanks her for the flowers she sent him while he was in the hospital. Then again, Homsar is a Reality Warper, so it's possible he can't truly be killed anyway. One Halloween-themed Main Page has an animation of a zombie Strong Bad rising from his grave, saying "I have come back from the dead to whoa-whoa-whoa holy craaap..." as his head falls off and rolls away.
  • The Flash animation series Madness Combat has three characters who never truly die: Hank, Jebus, and Tricky. No matter the cause of their death in the previous cartoon, they resurrect (with appropriate bandages, stitches, or scars) and resume battle in the next one. Jebus had his final death in episode 8 and the creator implied that it was definitive this time, and Tricky seems to be dead for good in episode 11.
  • For the sake of convenience in Object Shows, Game Show Hosts can resurrect and revive others as one of their three cardinal powersnote  if there are no recovery centers. This allows them to set up dangerous and life-threatening but entertaining challenges for the contestants without repercussions.
  • A third of all the season finales of Red vs. Blue involve Agent Tex dying. It turns out that both she and Church are both AI programs created by Project Freelancer. In a similar way Church is seemingly destroyed by an EMP at the end of Season 6, but is resurrected as Epsilon during Season 7.
  • RWBY: Penny was accidentally destroyed by Pyrrha during the Volume 3 tournament. However, Penny is reintroduced in the first episode of Volume 7 as a rebuilt robot with upgraded specifications. Her creator explains that, as long as her core survives, her body can be rebuilt; he just had to wait for the military to bring Amity Colosseum to Atlas to recover it. Despite this, Penny cannot keep being restored because replenishing her soul requires sacrificing pieces of his Aura, an act that is slowly killing him. RWBY: Amity Arena mentions that she has several cores in her body.
  • In one YouTube Poop, Mario crucifies Luigi. However, he comes back to life a moment later.
  • Underverse:
    • OVERWRITE is powerful enough to bring back one's soul after death, meaning that no matter how the victim is killed, the person who can OVERWRITE can undo it as if it never happened at all.
    • The main cast of X-Tale, except XTale!Frisk, are brought back in 0.4 thanks to the combined efforts of XGaster and XTale!Alphys. XTale!Frisk follows suit not long after.

    Webcomics 
  • Roast Beef, Ray, Todd and Téodor from Achewood have all gone through this at least once through the comic's run, and Molly managed to come back to Earth from heaven after hundreds of years. It remains to be seen if Little Nephew can attempt the same feat.
  • This strip of The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, has Dr. McNinja arguing with Death over whether he is really dead.
  • Happened at least twice in Ansem Retort:
    • Matt, a demon Marluxia killed in Season 1, came back in Season 2 to referee the murder-off between Axel and Cloud.
    • Darth Maul also invokes this trope, as he's made a comment about Obi-Wan getting in a "Hollywood cheap shot".
    • Riku implied in the Season 6 finale that he has done this as well, and promises to explain later. He's apparently a Time Lord, and regenerated every time he died.
  • Bob and George has Ran Cossack, who is a parody of this trope. He is made of really cheap Soviet parts, and could be killed by any kind of impact. However, his creator (Kalinka Cossack from Mega Man 4), realizing it would cost more to repair him than to build him again, built a machine that perpetually creates backup bodies for him; each time he is killed, a new Ran with a copy of his memories would appear. This leading to lots of "Ran-Bombs".
  • In Casey and Andy, both Casey and Andy die. Repeatedly. Sometimes at the hands of the other. And they're really dead: they ended up in Hell multiple times. They always come back. Even Andy's girlfriend (who is Satan) doesn't know quite how.
  • Initially subverted in Concerned: The Half Life and Death of Gordon Frohman, in which the title character dies at the end. An unofficial sequel resurrects the beloved title character via ignoring Gameplay and Story Segregation.
  • In Cunning Fire's prologue baby Akiva dies and refuses to move on, upsetting the balance. In order to restore this balance, Azrael pardons her life, granting her the ability to see spirits.
  • In The Dementia of Magic, Howard is revived with great difficulty.
  • Dragon Ball Multiverse: Everyone that died since the tournament started was wished back to life by a set of Dragon Balls after the second round ended.
  • In El Goonish Shive, Magus is not quite dead while he is stuck in the spiritual plane but he is effectively a ghost. Therefore his goal is to gain a body and effectively come back to life before returning to his home universe.
  • Mad scientists in Girl Genius do this all the time. To the point where they have theatrical tropes about the reasons and/or circumstances behind the resurrections (the one first noted being reviving a girl's deceased relatives as a method of courtship).
  • Guilded Age:
    • The party during Chapter 10.
    • Bandit in particular makes an Unexplained Recovery at the end of chapter 11. She claims not to know how she got better and figures that Harky's blood may have had something to do with it. After The Reveal, it's likely that Bandit just respawned like any MMO PC, and that the troll blood explanation was her player staying in character.
  • In Horndog, Freddy is shot by a sniper, briefly dies, but returns to life. He is killed again, returns as a zombie, and is killed by his roommate, Bob. If that wasn't enough, he is reincarnated as a teenage boy, but is killed by a chupacabra.
  • Starscream does this on a regular basis in the Insecticomics (see the Transformers entry below). Thrust has also done this twice, once after being crushed to death by Unicron in Transformers: Armada, a resurrection that was never really explained despite the fact that he's mentioned it more than once and once after being killed by the Fallen, then dragged back to her body by Starscream's ghost.
  • Inverted Fate: After Flowey once again absorbs the human SOULs and those of most of the monsters, he permanently separates Chara's SOUL from Frisk's. After absorbing the remaining monsters and breaking the Barrier, he brings Chara back to life by putting their SOUL back in their body all the way back in the Ruins.
  • Irregular Webcomic!: In addition to Chess with Death usually working out in favor of the not-quite-deceased, Death's politics have resulted in several characters' deaths being short-lived.
  • In Kagerou, Mindi, an Old One, can bring people back from the dead. It's even played for laughs once, when a nearly dead person is killed just so she can bring them back to life free of injuries.
  • Klonoa: Dream Crusaders: Tenebrae Hue's ritual brings previous Klonoa villains back from the dead. Played for Laughs later when Joka, one of these villains, later states that he "[doesn't] know why [he's] alive in the first place," with a big smile.
    Tenebrae Hue: With the power of a million dreams, I reach upon all of you whose time in this world was cut short! Whether it be from old age or someone else's hands... on this blessed night, I'll grant you all... a second chance!
  • The Cyborg ninja in The Last Days of Foxhound was both killed and resurrected by Mantis.
  • MS Paint Adventures has a few instances of this. In Problem Sleuth, the imaginary world gives the characters extra lives to use. If those run out though, they can also earn their life back by either defeating Death at a number of different games... or just walk out of the afterlife's front door. A similar mechanic is used in Homestuck where the character's Dream Selves act as "extra lives" if they die and another player gives them a resurrection kiss as is the case with Sollux, Dave, and Rose.
    • Aradia in Homestuck is brought back in a different way from normal though. Equius builds a robot body for her ghost to use, giving her a physical form to interact with the other characters.
    • The kernelsprites also count, since they're all prototyped with the remains of dead person that was important to the character. This gives the sprite the personality and all the memories of that dead person.
    • And now Kanaya is back from the dead too, although she's not exactly alive either.
    • In Sburb/Sgrub, characters can ascend to a special rank known as the God Tiers and gain even more power...but the trick is, they have to die in a certain place first. There are two slightly different variations: one that relies the dreamself as an extra life, and another that, for an as-yet-unexplained reason, doesn't.
    • Further, once a character is a God Tier, they can only be killed if the death is Heroic (they die accomplishing something heroic) or Just (they are corrupt and are killed by a hero). So far two God Tiers have died: John, who came back because his death was neither, and Vriska, whose death was Just, as letting her live would cause her to get all of her friends killed. Although thanks to John, the latter death has been retconned out of existence.
    • Even if both of characters bodies are dead, and God Tier doesn't help, there's also the Ring of Life, which can bring ghosts back to life.
    • All members of the Felt except for Scratch, Snowman and English are killed by the Midnight Crew in an intermission very early in the comic. For the comic's finale, Spades Slick brings all of them back via a magic timeline warping voodoo doll.
  • MS Paint Masterpieces: Fodder Force Redheaded Guy, Cut Man, and Enker; due to Doctor Light's attempt at changing the timeline.
  • Narbonic: Helen, being a Mad Scientist, has no problem resurrecting Dave after her mom kills him. It does have stages, though:
  • In 1/0, Manny is killed, and results in the creation of Max, Marcus, and Andy, shortly after Teddy Weddy falls on him. Later, as Junior tries to leave, Tailsteak recreates Manny in the form of a ghost known as Ghanny, and from then on, all characters who die (with an exception of Max, who ends up Deader than Dead) become a ghost.
  • Roy in The Order of the Stick, but not before it's Played for Laughs as his disintegrating corpse is dragged around for months because the team has been split in half, with the people who could perform Raise Dead not in the half in possession of the corpse.
  • In The Players Guide To SISU, Sisukas, a bandit leader, returns after being killed in the first battle. Thus far, the means of his return haven't been specified, but there's apparently a specific god whose clerics could do it.
  • In Schlock Mercenary, medical science can bring people back moments after death if the deceased's head is placed in a special bag with nanites as of the start of the strip, and the technology improves drastically through its run. Lampshaded when one character describes a foe as deader than disco, only for another to point out that disco has come back 11 times in the last three centuries and for the dead guy to come back in the very next strip. Medics actually have a grading system for deadness based on how much of the deceased's mind they can piece back together.
  • In Section P, Kate Five is killed by her nemesis Ohmega, and remains dead for a while, even as her lover Centennia mourns her. Eventually, her symbiote revives her and she returns to life.
  • In The Senkari, Freija, Val, and Rachel are all revealed to have come back from the dead at some point in their pasts during their origins flashback.
  • In The Silver Eye, Bhatair Hollingsworth is revived by Melete Dolan after having been beheaded and then chopped to pieces. When Apen Shephard meets him in Gallitan, he is understandably rather shocked.
  • Walkyverse:
    • It's Walky!: The final story arc before the narrative transitions to Joyce and Walky! centers around Walky being the first test subject of the reverse-engineered resurrection chamber.
    • Shortpacked!: An early Wham Shot in the comic was that Mike, who was last seen getting killed by aliens in It's Walky!, was somehow alive and working in the titular toy store. This, despite the fact that it was believed that there wasn't enough DNA of Mike to bring him back, and later hints suggesting the government wasn't interested in reviving a known sociopathic asshole. It's only during Mike's wedding to Amber that a hint about how he was revived was revealed: Joyce, out of gratitude to him for saving her life, leaked the blueprints to the resurrection chamber and a shirt stained with Mike's blood to a non-government affiliated company (strongly implied to be Galasso himself).
      • In the final story arc Dina somehow reappears, despite being dead for years at that point, presumably because the fabric of reality was breaking apart at that point thanks to diversity.
      • The resurrection chamber does have limits though: when Amber fielded the idea of bringing her hamster Snkrs back from the dead, Mike says the resurrection chamber revives someone at the same age they died, so bringing back a two year old hamster who died of old age would just delay the inevitable.
      • Galasso also brought both Ronald Reagan and the historical Jesus Christ back from the dead. Unlike the resurrection chamber examples, this is never explained.
  • Slightly Damned features a rare example where physically getting out of Hell is used for this purpose.
  • Oasis from Sluggy Freelance has come Back from the Dead no less than five times, and her "sister" Kusari at least once. How Oasis does this is unknown (even to her), and since they usually Never Found the Body, her simply being Not Quite Dead remains possible. As of more recent arcs, not only has the body been found, it has been found while Oasis is up and kicking in a new one.
  • Terror Island: After being dead for over a hundred strips, Aorist is suddenly resurrected by Bartleby.
  • In Union of Heroes there is a girl named Lynn, who is also called "The Eternal Victim". She is cursed to die instead of other people returning from Death afterwards.
  • The Non-Adventures of Wonderella: Superheroes dying and coming back to life happens so often that they throw a party every time it does, with everyone wearing grey jeans to it (except Queen Beetle, the only superhero to have never died).

    Web Original 
  • In the Anti-Cliché and Mary-Sue Elimination Society, Adrian comes back thanks to the use of Soul Jars.
  • C0DA, written by former The Elder Scrolls series writer/designer Michael Kirkbride, takes place in the far distant future of TES universe. It features a number of characters who have died throughout the series, including Almalexia, Sotha Sil, Dagoth Ur, Lorkhan, Numidium... Only Numidium gets an explanation as to how or why, and its a pretty big Hand Wave.
  • Cracked:
  • It's become a running gag in Dark Dream Chronicle that Vadiir can't stay dead.
  • The main character in Dragomir's Diary is killed by his own daughter as his castle comes crashing down around him and horrible beasties slither out of a weird, supernatural door. This being part of a video game, however, Dragomir is revived a month later when his save game is activated.
  • The Dream SMP contains several examples of characters being brought back to life after losing all three of their canon lives.
    • The first is Jack Manifold, who was killed by Techno during the Doomsday War but returned with all three lives after a brief trip to Hell. It's later clarified that he dragged himself out of the Afterlife through sheer rage and vengefulness.
    • The second is Tommy, having been murdered by Dream in Pandora's Vault before being brought back as a ploy, allegedly to prove that Dream really does have the power to resurrect people... though the motive behind this turns out to be a lie.
    • The third is Wilbur, who was resurrected by Dream when Tommy attempted to break into the prison and murder Dream.
    • It's later revealed that during the time between the Doomsday War and the Disc War Finale, Vikk and Lazar lost all three of their canon lives through Dream using them as human guinea pigs to test the revive-book, and they did get brought back to life by Dream using the book (making them the second and third to be brought back from the dead chronologically)... but they're ultimately killed off permanently to keep the book a secret.
  • In the Epic Tales 'verse David Wilson died in the first Shadow Hawk story only to become the Astral Controller.
  • Anna Demorah dies in the comic that marked the beginning of Felarya. Then the author announced that she had been resurrected "due to some weird distortion in space, time or whatever". She remains one of the main characters.
  • The Screamsheet's Fights Section has the planet come back from the dead after its been destroyed in a previous battle. Multiple times, no less.
  • Mahu: In "Crownless Eagle", Sebastian Stolarski gets shot during the siege of Stockholm. Unlike the other generals who lead the attack though, he manages to survive and carry on with the invasion of the Commonwealth Republic.
  • Whateley Universe:
    • Aughadhail, Queen of the Fae, died along with all her sisters, a long time ago in "The Sundering", during a war against the Great Old Ones. It may have been millions of years ago. But what was left of her spirit found what was left of her magic, and became part of the teenager whose body had that magic, so she's back.
    • The tendency of Super Villains to return from beyond the grave is lampshaded more than once. Indeed, Mephisto once set up a massive Death Trap aimed at several of the other supervillains (and more than a few superheroes) and went to great lengths to ensure that they were Deader than Dead, precisely to avoid this.
  • For the first twenty-four arcs of Worm, death is largely permanent, with major characters and heroes dying in various final and gruesome ways. Then, in Arc 24, Alexandria comes back from the dead to fight Behemoth, prompting an Oh, Crap! from Weaver, who was the one that murdered her in the first place, and who had complied with framing Alexandria for horrible crimes (as opposed to the horrible crimes she was actually guilty of, which were too terrible to be revealed at all) for the sake of the public's peace of mind. Fortunately, it turns out to be a body-snatcher doing a Dead Person Impersonation using Alexandria's invulnerable corpse.

    Web Video 
  • Belkinus Necrohunt: It was revealed that Thorne, the necromancer hunter who occasionally hounds the party, is actually the result of a true resurrection performed on Abigail Miharian, sister of Kara and Chandrelle.
  • A relatively common occurrence in Critical Role. Every single member of Vox Machina, as well as several members of the Mighty Nein have died and subsequently been resurrected — not particularly surprising given the setting. In particular, Mollymauk Tealeaf has this trope baked into his backstory: He crawled out of his own grave two years before the beginning of the campaign, with no memory from before. Then he went and did it again after being killed by Lorenzo in episode 26, only to reveal that he is alive and traveling with his former companion almost 90 episodes later.
  • In Decker, Kington is killed by the First Lady near the end of Decker Unclassified. He is however brought back to life in the first episode of Decker Unsealed thanks to an untested treatment which also makes him look younger.
  • Duck Guy in Don't Hug Me I'm Scared is brutally eaten in the fifth episode and left dead for the final, sixth episode. However, his friend begins to fidget with the computer that seems to control their absurd world, which has the side effect of briefly bringing Duck Guy back to reprise a small part of a song from the second episode before the computer glitches out and turns him into someone else.
  • Economy Watch: Happens twice in the series. The first time in the Season 1 Halloween special, "Night of the Economic Dead", David returns from the dead as a zombie thanks to the old videotape being played. The second time in the Season 1 Christmas special, "A Very Hoarder Christmas", David returns from the dead after being redeemed in the Afterlife.
  • Escape the Night : MatPat dies in Episode 5 of Season 3. At the end of episode six, the team gains access to the Lazarus Harp, an item that can bring one person they lost back to life. Guess who suddenly returns in episode seven?
  • Hero House directly addresses how frequently this occurs in comics, as well as the fact that it is now seemingly impossible.
  • In the first episode of the short-lived revival of lonelygirl15, Bree, who appeared to die in the Season 1 finale, is shown very much alive, even mentioning how a lot of people thought she was dead.
  • In "10 DEAD PEOPLE Who CAME BACK TO LIFE!" by Matthew Santoro, Matthew talks about 10 people who died and then came back to life.
  • In The Spoony Experiment, The Spoony One was killed by Squall after reviewing Final Fantasy VIII Linkara later cloned him using his protoplasmic remains and essentially brought him back from the dead.
  • Due to Word of God business issues, Doug Walker had to retcon To Boldly Flee and bring back The Nostalgia Critic. It was not a particularly cheerful return.

    Western Animation 
  • In Avatar: The Last Airbender it is made fairly clear in "The Crossroads of Destiny" that Azula's lightning attack on Aang in the Season 2 finale succeeded in killing him and he was only brought back by Katara using the spirit water to heal him. He even says as much:
    I went down! I didn't just get hurt, did I? It was worse than that. I was gone. But you brought me back.
  • Ben 10:
    • In the original series, Ghostfreak, as Zs'Skayr, gets resurrected by Dr. Viktor during part one of the Season 3 finale after being killed due to being exposed to the sun after escaping the Omnitrix one season earlier. At the end of the next episode, he gets killed again by the sun, though Ben regains his DNA in the Omnitrix, much to his initial dismay.
    • Ben 10: Ultimate Alien: Played both ways in "The Enemy of My Frenemy". Charmcaster kills off every living being in Ledgerdomain, a total of 600,000 including Ben, Gwen, and Kevin, and offers up their souls in a Deal with the Devil to resurrect her father. It actually works, with her father Spellbinder being revived with no problems. While Spellbinder is initially happy to be reunited with his daughter, he soon becomes disappointed in her for the price she paid to bring him back and willingly offers himself in exchange for the return of the souls, which is granted.
    • Ben 10: Omniverse: In the episode "Showdown, Part 1", a flashback reveals that the reason Ben stopped using his previous most used alien Feedback was that when he was 11, he had an encounter with Malware, who forcibly ripped Feedback's DNA out of the Omnitrix and turned it to dust. As a failsafe, the Omnitrix could no longer accept DNA from Feedback's race, but in "Showdown, Part 2" Ben regained Feedback after a negotiation with his past self.
    • The finale of The Secret Saturdays saw the death of Big Bad V.V. Argost. The Saturdays' appearance on the Omniverse episode "T.G.I.S." saw him resurrected at the hands of Dr. Animo.
  • Darkseid in the DC Animated Universe was killed by Brainiac's exploding asteroid Supervillain Lair, but gets brought back when Luthor uses Tala against her will in an attempt to restore Brainiac. According to the DVD commentary, Tala did it on purpose just to spite Luthor. Hell hath no fury, indeed.
  • The Season 3 finale of The Dragon Prince resulted in Viren falling to his doom. But at the very end of the episode, he woke up to his daughter. He originally thought he miraculously survived the fall, but Claudia revealed that he didn't and was only alive because she used a spell to revive him.
  • The cast of Drawn Together have died many times with Ling Ling and Toot having the largest death count, only for them to come back either in the next episode or later on in the same episode.
    • Justified with Xander. Being a video game character, he has multiple lives, which proved problematic in one episode when he tried to commit suicide.
  • In Duckman, Duckman's two teddy bear secretaries Fluffy and Uranus are often killed in nearly every episode they appear in (usually by Duckman himself) only to be brought back in the next episode.
  • Family Guy:
    • James Woods is brought back to life by scientists using space age tech after being stabbed in the back in a previous episode. As a Hollywood actor, he was entitled to top-notch medical care not available to others. Apparently he's that famous.
    • In "Life of Brian" Brian looks like he's been killed when he's run over playing street hockey with Stewie and dies in the hospital, then replaced with the Griffins' new dog Vinny. In "Christmas Guy" Stewie uses his past self's time machine return pad to prevent Brian's death, returning the show to the status quo.
  • Futurama:
    • There's Roberto, who in "The Six Million Dollar Mon" was arrested and promptly executed via electromagnetism. When Hermes wanted a robot brain transplant to complete his new robot body, Farnsworth inadvertently dug up Roberto's and after Zoidberg put Hermes' brain back in his old body, the empty robot took Roberto's brain. Roberto terrorized the crew for about a minute before he ate a piece of Hermes' skin and melted from it being so spicy due to Hermes' diet of extremely hot food. He then makes an appearance in the show's penultimate episode "Stench and Stenchibility" with no explanation whatsoever.
    • Before that in the first quarter of "Into the Wild Green Yonder" Bender gets pumped full of lead by the Robot Mafia then 'inexplicably' rises out of the ditch they buried him at the beginning of the second quarter. Subverted in that it's well established in the series that bullets are just an annoyance to robots, depending on which side of Negative Continuity the episode falls on.
    • In the episode "The Thief of Baghead", Calculon kills himself after ingesting food coloring (which is toxic to robots). He was reenacting the climax of Romeo and Juliet and tried to put on the best possible on-stage death by actually killing himself, meaning he hammed himself to death. The Planet Express crew bring him back to life in the late series episode "Calculon 2.0", only for him to die again at the end of the episode.
    • In "The Ghost in the Machines", Bender is dead for most of the episode and manages to come back by getting sent to heaven and then beating up Robot God.
      Fry: You're back from the dead?
      Bender: I'm back from lots of stuff.
  • Gargoyles has a very realistic example of this after Broadway accidentally shoots Elisa, where she nearly dies and is clinically dead for a few moments when her heart temporarily stops. The doctors revive her with a defibrillator.
  • In the two-part Grand Finale of Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, Phil Ken Sebben claws his way up from the grill of the bus that struck him dead the previous season, and says "Hah ha! Final episode stunt casting!" He then spends the episode driving the bus in reverse back to the city, just in time to arrive in the final scene and run Harvey over, killing him off for real. Odd thing is that in the episode where he is hit by the bus, he apparently gets cremated.
  • Several characters on Kaeloo have been blown up, decapitated, electrocuted, etc. only to be perfectly fine in the next episode.
  • Sylvester the Cat from Looney Tunes died 24 deaths in 16 different cartoons, one episode (Satan's Waitin') features him slowly losing all nine of his lives.
  • In the Season 9 premiere of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Grogar resurrects King Sombra from the dead to serve in his Legion of Doom. Not being a team player Sombra decides to go it alone, comes at least decently close to winning, but then gets graphically blown to pieces by The Power of Friendship all in about the span of an afternoon. Seeing him as weak and useless in his plans of weaponizing friendship against the ponies, Grogar doesn't even bother to resurrect him again.
  • Metalocalypse: Ofdensen seemingly died in the second season finale, but then came back. It's revealed at the end of the third season (and given more detail in the fourth season) that he was not Faking the Dead, he had to die in order to become the Dead Man in the prophecy, and the Church of the Black Klok revived him.
  • The title of Not Without My Handbag refers to the dead Auntie climbing out of hell, and later the ground, in order to retrieve her handbag.
  • Regular Show: Rigby three times. First when he gets accidentally killed by Mordecai after flirting with Margaret, second when he gets eaten by Snowballs the Ice Monster, and third when he gets accidentally killed by Skips during arm wrestling. Every time, he gets resuscitated via magic.
  • In The Ren & Stimpy Show episode "Haunted House", the Ghost falls into a depression after his multiple failed attempts to scare the title characters, and "kills" himself only to turn into a living, fat naked black guy.
  • The Simpsons:
    • This exchange from a Show Within a Show seen in an early episode:
      "Father McGrath! I thought you were dead!"
      "I was!"
    • In the "Treehouse of Horror VI" story "Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace," Groundskeeper Willie is set on fire after the furnace is set too high, then, due to overly cheap PTA members he can't escape (faulty door knobs, which would cost $12 to repair) and can't extinguish himself (empty fire extinguishers, which the fire department offered to recharge for free), then ignored by the PTA as he burns to death. Willie vows revenge on their children by striking in their dreams. After being defeated by Bart, Willie shows up at the bus stop outside the Simpsons' house, alive and well.
    • Dr. Marvin Monroe was earlier subjected to a Bus Crash as no one on the crew, not even his voice actor, liked the character. The Season 15 episode "Diatribe of a Mad Housewife" has him show up alive and well, saying he has just "been very sick."
    • Despite clearly dying in the movie, Dr. Nick still continues to show up in the series.
    • Homer dies of a heart attack when Mr. Burns fires him. His ghost decides to come back from the dead when he hears Mr. Burns tell Smithers to send a ham to Marge as consolation. However having come back, Mr. Burns cancels the ham.
  • South Park:
  • Scooter the light purple surfer fish from SpongeBob SquarePants has died three times to date: first when SpongeBob asked him to move from his seat he was killed by his smelly breath, drowned after Bubble Buddy buried him in the sand, and exploded after being kicked off a cliff by Mystery the seahorse.
  • Star Trek: Lower Decks parodies the frequent resurrections in the live-action Star Trek series by having Lt. Shaxs get dramatically killed off in the first season finale, then suddenly reappear in the middle of the second season. The lower deckers aren't given any details on how exactly this happened, as apparently the details are very traumatic.
  • Star Wars: The Clone Wars: During the Mortis arc, the Son kills Ahsoka with a tap on her forehead. The Daughter, who was lethally wounded also by the Son, channels her remaining life force into Ahsoka's body (using Anakin as a medium) to revive her.
  • Steven Universe: In "Off Colors", Lars diesnote  after being caught in the center of an explosion, getting slammed into a wall and then falling thirty feet to the ground. Steven starts to cry over his body, and discovers his healing powers include the ability to resurrect through his tears. Side effects: Lars is now pink, his heartbeat is awfully slow, he doesn't need to eat anymore and his hair is a portal to Lion's Pocket Dimension. All of which implies Lion was a regular animal that died and Rose resurrected in similar fashion.
  • Although Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003) Big Bad The Shredder had already become infamous for turning out to be Not Quite Dead, one of these occasions later turned out to actually be a Back from the Dead situation. Given the character, the elaboration was sort of unnecessary, except for the fact that a) said occasion involved being at ground zero of an explosion that atomized a building, and b) it allowed the writers to bring the character back yet again. Also played straight with a couple of other characters, one of which included a nifty sequence in which flesh returns to his skeleton as he is resurrected.
  • In the fourth season of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012), The Shredder is slain by Leonardo only to be revived for one episode shortly into the fifth season.
  • Teen Titans (2003): The Story Arc for the fourth season involves Slade, the Big Bad from the first two seasons, coming Back from the Dead to serve as The Dragon to the new Big Bad, Trigon. This example is especially notable because with Comic Books (and therefore their adaptations) the usual resurrection is a retcon saying that the character was not truly dead. Slade's death was a Never Found the Body, and Robin's hallucinations of Slade in a later episode proved to be poisoning by someone heavily hinted to be Slade, so the stage was set for it to prove to have been a Not Quite Dead or one of his many robot duplicates... and then it comes out that he was very much dead when he appeared to die, and had been revived by the series' version of Satan as a messenger!
  • ThunderCats (1985):
    • Jaga dies of old age while guiding the ThunderCats' ship towards Third Earth, but he returns as a Spirit Advisor to team leader Lion-O (and eventually the rest of the team as well).
    • Mumm-ra is supposedly killed on at least three occasions, but as long as evil exists Mumm-ra lives!
    • The Berzerkers were killed (by Panthro sinking their ship) in their first appearance. This was confirmed when the ghost of the Captain Hammerhand showed up a few episodes later. Then he came back with a new look and a new crew in the second season.
    • And there's Grune the Destroyer, who died before the series began, but returns to harass the ThunderCats as a ghost. Twice.
  • Tom of Tom and Jerry has died 6 times in 6 cartoons (one of them turned out to be a dream though).
  • Transformers:
    • In The Transformers: The Movie, among the many Transformers killed off include Optimus Prime and Starscream. In subsequent episodes of the TV series, both come back. Optimus Prime initially appears as a Spirit Advisor when his successor, Rodimus Prime, journeys into the Matrix of Leadership. In "Dark Awakening", Optimus is brought back to life as a zombie, only to sacrifice himself again to save his fellow Autobots. In "The Return of Optimus Prime", he is completely revived and restored, and survives the end of the series (only to be killed in a Heroic Sacrifice in the Japanese series Headmasters, although resurrected in the Expanded Universe story Battlestars: The Return of Convoy). Starscream returns as a ghost in two episodes, "Starscream's Ghost" and "Ghost in the Machine"; in the latter, Starscream receives a new body from Unicron, returning to life, only to get blasted off into space. Starscream's spark makes a return appearance in the Beast Wars episode "Possession".
    • In Beast Wars, Optimus Primal died saving the planet in the first season cliffhanger, but was revived a few episodes into the second season. The writers left him dead for as long as Hasbro would let them, and his return was at least with guns blazing.
      • Same series, different character: BlackArachnia. After being murdered by Tarantulas while her new Maximal comrades were trying to remove her malfunctioning Predacon Programming, she was brought back to life thanks to the Transmetal II Driver, which also turned her into a Transmetal II.
    • Also done by Optimus Prime in Armada, and Megatron several times over the course of the Unicron trilogy.
    • Overall, Optimus' combination of Heroic Sacrifice and Back from the Dead in the Sorting Algorithm of Deadness has become a running gag in the fandom, to the point where a Word Filter on the site 7chan replaced 'Jesus Christ' with 'Optimus Prime.'
    • Starscream has this happen a lot too. In addition to the G1 version, he was killed and resurrected on two occasions in the Marvel comic, and in Transformers: Animated, he becomes immortal due to a shard of the Allspark — which allows him to suffer Waspinator-class indignities, actually die, but then revive in seconds. The Noble Demon Transformers: Armada Starscream also dies and returns in Energon, but he was Not Himself.
    • Ironhide dies in the first issue of The Transformers (IDW) and is resurrected by Alpha Trion a short time later. However there's a catch, Alpha Trion started building this version of Ironhide before the original died so he lacks his predecessor's memories and knowledge of current events.
  • The Venture Bros.: In the last episode of Season 1 the boys are killed. In the first episode of Season 2 their clones are reactivated and filled with their stored memories. Dr. Venture explains that this is the thirteenth time it has happened — and shows all previous deaths.

 
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Video Example(s):

Ganon's Blood Moon

On the hour of the blood moon, Calamity Ganon's power rises to its peak, with the glow of the moon reviving all the monsters that Link had slayed.

Example of:
Bad Moon Rising

The Sandman

And Then Alear ...

Killing Off the...

Final Healing I...

"I wasn't shot."

Producer Nappa

Gruntilda the W...

Anne Comes Back

"You Both Have ...

He Is Risen

Voldemort returns

Hank gets reviv...

Titus Alexius i...

She recast Pietro?

Ysera, The Moth...

Santa Christ

Unexpected Inte...

Justice is a Mi...

Bloom's Sirenix...

Uldren Becomes ...

John White

Alternative Title(s): Too Much Heaven, Dead Character Resurrection, Dead Character Revival, Resurrected From The Dead, Resurrecting The Dead, Resurrection From The Dead, Resurrection Of The Dead

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Ganon's Blood Moon

On the hour of the blood moon, Calamity Ganon's power rises to its peak, with the glow of the moon reviving all the monsters that Link had slayed.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (11 votes)

Example of:

Main / BadMoonRising

Media sources:

Report

Ganon's Blood Moon

The Sandman

And Then Alear ...

Killing Off the...

Final Healing I...

"I wasn't shot."

Producer Nappa

Gruntilda the W...

Anne Comes Back

"You Both Have ...

He Is Risen

Voldemort returns

Hank gets reviv...

Titus Alexius i...

She recast Pietro?

Ysera, The Moth...

Santa Christ

Unexpected Inte...

Justice is a Mi...

Bloom's Sirenix...

Uldren Becomes ...

John White