"Yeah, boo hiss. I know, look, I hate it too. In movies, where the studio gets all paranoid about a downer ending so the guy shows up, he's magically alive on crutches? I hate that. I mean, shit, why not bring them all back?"
— Harry Lockhart, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
A beloved major character is seemingly killed at the climax of the movie or episode, hearts are wrenched, four-year-olds are traumatized, grown men are reduced to tears, and then — oh look, the character is Not Quite Dead after all. "I thought you were dead!", they recite before walking off into the sunset.
A variant is the Robot Disney Death where a Robot Buddy is seemingly destroyed in a Heroic Sacrifice. While at least one character mourns, the robot reappears fully repaired after an extensive period in Mr. Fixit's maintenance shop, good as new and touched by all the concern.
Animated films seem destined to have these, considering the target audience is primarily young kids, and nobody wants to give a Downer Ending to them. Writers who are considering implementing it need to be extremely careful, as it can very easily come across as a tacky and lazy way to add some cheap, manipulative and predictable drama to the ending. Over the years it has been done to — um — death, and audiences expect it. You run the risk of making your viewers remember they're watching television, even if it does shut up the Media Watchdogs.
Named after its frequent use in the Disney Animated Canon, though even Disney likes to kill 'em off for real now and then.
Subtrope of Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated and First Law of Resurrection. Compare Sorting Algorithm of Deadness (how likely this is to happen), Our Hero Is Dead (when this is used as a Cliffhanger), Unexplained Recovery, Shock-and-Switch Ending, World-Healing Wave (done on a massive scale), Only Mostly Dead, Plot Armor (you know he's going to live because he's the main character). Contrast Killed Off for Real. May involve Not Now, We're Too Busy Crying Over You. A Mistaken Death Confirmation or Premature Eulogy are likely to occur somewhere between the death and the return.
Not to be confused with the related trope Disney Villain Death, which refers to a villain falling from a very high place, such as a cliff, although it can sometimes overlap with this trope when the antagonist doesn't actually die. Also not to be confused with Walt Disney's actual death.
Since this trope requires both a death and an ending, be wary of large, unmarked spoilers.
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Asian Animation
- Boonie Bears: In The Adventurers 2 episode 36, the flight-fearing bird falls and his bird idols break the news to the bears that he's... all right and flying, but in a way that initially makes it look like he's dying.
Comic Books
- Omaha the Cat Dancer:
- Omaha's best friend Shelly gets shot in the first issue. A couple of issues later, we find out she wasn't quite dead.
- Also, Chuck was told by his (insane) dad that his mother had died when he was young. Guess who shows up in the middle of the story?
- There is a very long list of people in The DCU who have been revived by the Lazarus Pit, discovered by Ra's al Ghul, which can revive people at death's door, or full-on bring the dead back to life. Unfortunately, one of the side effects of using the Lazarus Pit is losing your mind. Those who have been resurrected or healed from fatal injuries include Ra's al Ghul, Jason Todd, Talia al Ghul, the second Black Canary, Cassandra Cain, Lady Shiva, Bane, Isis, the wife of Black Adam, and more.
- The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers: Fat Freddy is found lifeless in bed—his grief-stricken friends hold a wake and bury him themselves. At a graveside picnic some time later, a bottle of potent liquor spills on the ground, seeps in, and revives him from a drug-induced immobilization. He furiously bursts out to his friends' joy and horror.
- Lucky Luke: A not very dramatic and rather brief case happens in the album The Daltons' Escape where Lucky Luke appears to have been crushed to death by falling rocks and we see the Daltons cheering and yet not sure that he is dead. The most noteworthy part of it is seeing Jolly Jumper's Not So Stoic reaction and openly weeping for his fallen friend.
- Ultimate Marvel
- Ultimatum:
- Spider-Man dies in the story, but it was later revealed that he was Not Quite Dead.
- Valkyrie and Captain America die during the flood, but they were saved because Thor traded their lives with Hela for his own.
- Ultimate X-Men: Wraith killed Thunderbolt Ross as part of his coup, and Millar did not bring it up again in later arcs or in The Ultimates, his immediate follow-up work. However, Ross returned in Ultimate Fantastic Four: he simply woke up in the morgue.
- Ultimatum:
- Hound: Emer seemingly dies from the shock of King Connor's bull running into her when one of Maeve's soldiers attempts to capture it away from her father's farm. A grieving Cú Cullan fights Maeve's soldiers in her name but she eventually awakens in the middle of her funeral.
Comic Strips
- Every Spy vs. Spy strip contains this trope. A black or white spy gets killed every comic, only to make a return next strip to treat the living spy to a death of their own.
- One The Far Side strip has a bear sitting up from his coffin at his funeral, and saying, "I was hibernating, for cryin' out loud. Don't you guys ever bother to take a pulse?"
Fan Works
- In the Abraxas (Hrodvitnon) Recursive Fanfiction Abraxas: The Clash of Silver
, Kiryu is wrecked and seemingly killed by Mechagodzilla in Hong Kong, devastating its pilot Aleksandra. The ending reveals that his consciousness survived and his robotic hull is being rebuilt.
- The surprisingly plausible fan sequel to Earth's Children, Broud's Destiny, has Ayla's chief antagonist defending the Clan against gangs of Others who paint themselves white and kill "flatheads" for kicks. At the climax, the leader of the "chalk-faces" viciously stabs Broud in the abdomen at the same moment Broud breaks his neck. Broud drops to the ground and everything looks like a beautiful death scene. End of chapter. The next chapter opens with a Clan funeral ceremony... turns out it's for Broud's mom Ebra. Broud will take time to recover but is fine.
- In two separate Calvinverse stories - specifically, Calvin and Hobbes: The Movie and Trouble Island - Hobbes is hit with a machine that makes everyone see him as a stuffed animal, even Calvin. Both times, he comes back.
- A Diplomatic Visit: Happens in chapter 11 of the third story, Diplomacy Through Schooling. The final clash with Tirek kicks off when he destroys Twilight's home and the school she founded, making her think he killed all her students and their teachers. After the fight, it turns out they're all just fine, having evacuated in time.
- Late in the The Mummy fic Fairy Tales and Hokum, Tom is attacked by pygmy mummies behind a caved-in ceiling; the sudden silence leads Jonathan to believe he died. He doesn't, and turns up alive a few chapters later.
- The Great Disney Adventure Saga: What do you expect? It's a Disney world. So this happens quite a bit with characters being near death before being healed or being revealed as ok.
- The Immortal Game: Fluttershy is seemingly killed by Wrong!Dash during the final fight with Nihilus, but it turns out that Fluttershy has a Healing Factor (something that only Earth ponies are supposed to have), which saves her life.
- Last Child of Krypton: Shinji is briefly thought dead after the battle with Zeruel.
- Happens many times in The Lion King Adventures:
- Zazu does this as a prank in order to terrify Simba and Nala in Dead as a Dodo.
- Simba is presumed to be dead in Friends to the End. He is not, though, and gets his Big Damn Kiss with Nala.
- Nala does actually die in Darkness Falls. Simba has her resurrected after dying himself.
- Mad World (Invader Zim): Zim gets butchered by Nny, and has his PAK pulled by Dib as a Mercy Kill. But his mind survives inside the PAK, and he ends up sharing bodies with Dib until they can clone him a new body.
- (Mis)communications: Deconstructed. By Kalos, Ash has died at least six times since age ten and it doesn't faze him anymore, or at least so he says. But, to Alain, it's freaky and sad because people aren't supposed to die and be revived like that, especially kids.
- Moonshadow: King is presumedly killed by Bill of the Titan Trappers in chapter 10 with The Collector unable to use their reversal spell to heal him due to having their magic drained. In chapter 11 Camila examination of King reveals that The Collector had enough magic in them to heal King internally and Camila can save the rest of him.
- Everybody on Berk in Persephone believed that Hiccup was killed by a Night Fury, with Stoick blaming Astrid because she was there when it happened. When everyone realizes that this was false, this comes as a shock to everybody.
- Pokémon Reset Bloodlines:
- Ash's Squirtle believed himself the Sole Survivor of the Squirtle Squad he was separated from the others by a cave-in at an underground passageway. Later sidestories reveal they all survived, although ended up separated from each other.
- The Serial Killer known as the Bloodliner Hunter was presumed to have suffered a Disney Villain Death when he refused to be saved from falling off a cliff in Two Island. The second Holiday Special reveals that he's very much alive and made it to Johto.
- Viridian: The Green Guide: Queen Bee's host, Hagakure, falls victim to a deliberate example from Kaminari, who forces her out of her host by stopping her heart. She recovers after Kaminari applies chest compressions.
- In Mortality, the first book of the Deliver Us from Evil Series, Sherlock Holmes is believed to have been killed by his Arch-Enemy, Professor Moriarty. It isn't until a few chapters later that the reader knows for certain that Holmes is still alive, but the heroes themselves don't know for sure until Inspector Lestrade and Dr. Watson overhear Moran confirming it.
- Inner Demons: Rarity is seemingly killed by Trixie during the Battle of Fillydelphia, but it turns out she was just rendered comatose.
- Mare of Steel: Rainbow Dash is caught in an explosion of magic at the end of the first arc. She is badly injured, almost to the point of death, but manages to recover.
- Ojamajo Doremi: Rise of the Shadows: Towards the end of the fic, Majorin and the Ojamajos are slain by their Shadows. However, the Queen's Super Mode allows her to bring them all back without anyone else dying.
- Nobody Dies: After a failed attack on an Angel, Shinji is informed by Asuka that he was clinically dead for 15 minutes.
- In the Zootopia fic Guardian Blue - Season 1, Nick falls into the water recycling system while saving a wolf pup from the villain Darmaw who also falls in. Darmaw's body is later recovered, but Nick's is never found. After several days of searching he is pronounced dead. Judy learns of a hidden location his body could have possibly washed into and ventures in to retrieve his body and get closure. Ultimately she discovers that Nick is still alive but badly hurt and is able to pull him back out to safety.
- Superman in Young Justice: Darkness Falls. As per tradition, he gets beaten to death by Doomsday, absorbs lots of solar radiation and finally comes back to life when he is needed the most.
- Son of the Sannin: The five jinchuriki (Ukataka, Yugito Nii, Roshi, Han, and Yagura) who were captured and killed by Akatsuki over the course of the story are temporarily resurrected as Revenant Zombies by Naruto during the final battle. However, when Obito uses the Rinne Tensei at the cost of his life, he ends up making their resurrection permanent.
Film — Animation
- The eponymous robot in The Iron Giant is shown reassembling himself after a Heroic Sacrifice against an incoming nuclear missile. (A rare example of a good Robot Disney Death, meaning both that it is very satisfying to the audience and that it was set up properly — the Giant's self-repair ability was demonstrated earlier in the film.)
- Titan A.E. . Gune saves Stith from a bomb Preed placed on her wrist, only for it to detonate and leave him wounded and he mutters "I'll just take a little nap", before collapsing. Later, just when the Drej are about to destroy the Titan, Gune arrives to the rescue and hangs a lampshade on the trope.
Gune: I finished my nap!
- Diego, in Ice Age straddles somewhere between this trope and Unexplained Recovery with an ambiguous "Nine lives, baby" after taking a killing blow meant for Manny.
- Space Chimps 2: Zartog Strikes Back: Zartog uses a de-particle-izer to zap all the scientists out of existence. They're brought back at the end.
- In The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, SpongeBob and Patrick are dried up to death in the Shell City gift shop and then revived a minute later when their tears short out an electrical outlet and activate the sprinkler system.
- In Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, after the explosion of their helicopter, Kadaj throws to Rufus the bloodstained ID badges of Tseng and Elena. Later, they catch him in a net after he jumps off a building, thus averting his death as well.
- To be fair, Vincent mentions that he found them horribly tortured and healed them the best he could, even if he didn't know it was enough.
- Also, Cloud, shot by Loz at the climax of the movie.
- From the dialogue between Reno and Rude before they set off a bomb in order to kill Loz and Yazoo, it makes it sound like they aren't going to be coming out of this one alive. But yet all four of them seem to survive the blast, Reno and Rude are seen at the end with the rest of the Turks, whilst Loz and Yazoo go off to get Cloud. The latter pair however, don't survive Aerith's Great Gospel/Lifestream Water/Magical Rain.
- And then there's Rufus, who turns up alive in the movie after being last seen in the game getting blown up real good. Particularly irritating is that Cloud rather rudely shuts up his explanation of how he survived, the one piece of exposition in the film that fans of the game were actually interested in.
- It turns out, according to the Expanded Universe novellas that there was some sort of secret "escape hatch" hidden under his desk that Rufus suggested be put in there in the first place while his father was still in charge of Shinra Inc.... Yeah, we're not buying it either.
- Played with in the Spanish animated film Nocturna. The Cat Shepard appears to die after fending off the evil shadow, and Tim accepts his death by saying he'll always live on in his heart. Right before the end of the movie, we see a herd of cats run by, with the Cat Shepard's familiar legs and gait among them. Tim doesn't, though.
- An alternate version of Rock and Rule has Zip survive his self-sacrifice to save Omar from the demon.
- The Disney-esque film Once Upon a Forest has one of these near the end, where the characters and the audience believe for a moment that Michelle has succumbed to her chlorine gas-induced sickness. A teardrop from her uncle revives her.
- Fly gets one of these in Help! I'm a Fish! Everyone thinks that he's failed to turn back into a human, and Chuck is frantic in trying to save his cousin, even trying to suggest ludicrous things like brewing up a new potion or using time travel as the Professor and Aunt Anna tries to calm him down and explain there's nothing that can be done. In the commotion Chuck slips and Fly goes into the air, Aunt Anna tries to catch him, drops him and steps wrong. Cue Sickening "Crunch!" and gasps from the horrified family. Then Fly calls out offscreen and sticks a hand out of the tank. Turns out he really did turn back and he's still alive (albeit still hurt from where Crab nicked him) and the fish was just the stuffed fish model from earlier. Cue Happy Ending.
- At the end of Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland, Nemo takes a rather big fall while defeating the Nightmare King, and dies. Or, not. This was meant to be the culmination of a plot point where it was possible Nemo could die after using the royal scepter to defeat the Nightmare King because of it being too much power for his body to handle, but since scenes pertaining to that were edited from the VHS due to Never Say "Die", it made this feel much more out of place.
- This happens twice to the heroine of The Swan Princess films. The first film has her saved by a declaration of love from her prince. The third has her vaporized by a bolt of black magic. When her now-husband prince burns the copy of the spell that summoned it so that its powers can never be used again, she materializes from the resultant flames. Also, Jean-Bob is knocked out at the climax of II and brought back as a side effect of the spell that turns Odette into a swan and back.
- The first film also averted this trope rather surprisingly: after a very long opening number which establishes the relationships between all of the major players (not only the love/hate relationship of Odette and Derek, but the extremely close friendship of King William and Queen Uberta), King William is abruptly killed. This seems to have no repercussions on any of the other characters.
- In the 1999 animated version of The King and I, this happens to the King after his hot air balloon goes down.
- Astro in the 2009 Astro Boy film — twice! The first time, Dr. Tenma removes his Blue Core, but has a change of heart in time to revive him, acknowledge him as his son, and allow him to escape at Tenma's own risk. The second time, Astro pulls a Heroic Sacrifice to defeat Peacekeeper, only to be revived by Zog.
- How to Train Your Dragon has one near the end. After the final battle, the other vikings look for Hiccup, but the only one who can be found is Toothless. That combined with the dragon's forlorn look is taken as a Very Bad Sign. But then Toothless reveals he's been shielding Hiccup with his wings, but the tension remains until Stoick checks for a heartbeat. And finds one. However, Hiccup does leave the film's climax minus the lower half of his leg.
- Kung Fu Panda plays around with this a bit. After his fight with Tai Lung, Po returns to the temple to find Shifu lying on the ground, still injured from his fight with Tai Lung. As Po rushed to his side to comfort him Shifu thanked Po for bringing peace to the valley and himself, closing his eyes. Afraid that he was succumbing to his wounds, Po calls to Shifu begging him to not die, to which Shifu replies "I'm not dying you idiot!" Turns out he was just resting.
- Heather the possum, in Over the Hedge, who gets kicked against a wall by antagonist Gladys Sharp and appears to be killed upon impact, much to the horror of her father the twist being that she's a possum, and is merely faking.
- Both Stanley and Rosie in Don Bluth's A Troll in Central Park.
- There's a very brief one in 9 After defeating the BRAIN, 9 tries to run away as the machine breaks down, and is nearly crushed. At some point it really does look like he got killed, but he wakes up about two seconds later.
- Played with in Megamind. Minion's water-helmet shatters in the final fight, and afterwards he appears to be dying. He and Megamind share a few words, and Minion... puts on an overdramatic display of dying. At which point Megamind casually tosses him in the fountain, where he laughs and says he feels much better. "What a drama queen!"
- This trope is used in Rise of the Guardians when the Sandman dies but is later resurrected during the climatic battle.
- Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs has this at the end of the movie. Everyone thinks Flint died from stopping the machine, but a few moments later, he's carried down by his Ratbirds, looking no worse for wear too.
- Insectosaurus, the giant insect in Monsters vs. Aliens, looks dead when blasted by an alien spaceship and wrapped lifeless and unmoving in a cocoon. But he was simply metamorphising into a butterfly, and later comes Back from the Dead just in time to be used as a Deus ex Machina to save the day.
- G.I. Joe: The Movie. The character in question: Duke, by impaling. In fact, he actually was supposed to die (and they were even planning to drop him from the available toy line to go with it). But after seeing how heartbroken all the kids were about Optimus Prime's death in Transformers: The Movie, they added in a last-minute line stating that Duke simply went into a coma.
- Like most Disney film tropes at the time, this happens to both title characters of Tom and Jerry: The Movie.
- The Rugrats Movie:
- When Chuckie, Phil, and Lil go their separate ways from Tommy, they try find shelter in a storm. Lightning strikes a tree, causing it to fall, and Lil thinks that the tree fell on Phil, as all she could find near the tree were his shoes. It turns out that Phil just accidentally left his shoes behind when he ran for cover.
- The film's climax plays with this. Spike sends himself and a wolf into a river. Moments later, Stu shows up to rescue the kids, who mistake him for a wizard and ask to bring Spike back to life. It is then revealed that Spike survived by landing at the bottom of the bridge.
- In Ed, Edd n Eddy's Big Picture Show, the trope was deconstructed. Both Ed and Eddy appeared to be sinking in quicksand, but it was only just mud that happened to looked like quicksand, and it was one of the many jokes they pulled after they went to the gag factory. This ticks off Edd, and almost left the other two to faced the consequences over the Noodle Incident that led to the events of the movie. This made Eddy realize how serious the situation actually was, and that he probably had gone too far.
- In Don Bluth's Anastasia, Dmitri is hit in the head with a stone in the climax and appears to have died from the blow. But he's okay — he was just knocked out.
- In another triumph for Don Bluth, Petrie does this in The Land Before Time, getting seemingly devoured by Sharptooth just before drowning.
- Also thanks to a good Deus ex Machina, this is what becomes of Mrs. Brisby's family in Bluth's The Secret of NIMH when her cinderblock house falls and sinks into the mud... before the jewel glows and restores everything back to normal.
- In The Pebble and the Penguin, Rocko appears to have been swept away by a wave, only to appear in the middle of the climax very much alive.
- Rock-A-Doodle gives Edmund one. He appears to have been strangled to death in the climax, but gets better and turns back into a boy.
- In the final fight sequence of the Golddigger animated film, Brittany is roasted by the dragon Dreadwing. As Gina sobs over her presumably-fallen sister, Brittany groans and sits up.
- In Chicken Run, Ginger gets a rather brief one in the climactic escape scene.
- It happens to two of the characters in The Legend of the Titanic, one with an electrocuted mouse and another one with an octopus, who didn't move out of the way from under the ship after he couldn't hold it up any longer.
- Some villagers from The Return of Hanuman, including Minku's father and Maruti's father, were thrown into a volcano by the village gangsters. By the end of the movie, Maruti turned into Superhero Hanuman and released all of the victims after he defeated a monster formed out of the volcano.
- Nigel from Rio, sort of. Even though he's a villain, it's really upsetting when he is sucked in an airplane's propeller, showing feathers flying out, too, and is thought to be dead until the ending, where he is stripped of his feathers on the forest floor, and Mauro (the Monkeys' leader) takes embarrassing pictures of him naked, leading into the credits.
- Shrek:
- This happens in Shrek Forever After. At the end of the movie Shrek fades out of existence, as he gave up the day of his birth to Rumplestiltskin in exchange for a day to live his life the way he wanted to as an ogre. But he gets one last chance to tell Fiona how much she means to him before he dies. They exchange one last kiss and Shrek disappears... only for the entire reality that 'Stiltskin had created to fade out of existence as well. As it turns out, the contract was to be made null and void if Fiona and Shrek exchanged a lovers' kiss; if Fiona had fallen in love with Shrek in the alternate universe, then the contract ends and the universe with it. Shrek is returned to his original universe, with his friends and family surrounding him at his children's birthday party. Shrek gets his happily ever after.
- Also used in Shrek 2 with King Harold. He takes a magical blast from the Fairy Godmother to protect Shrek and Fiona, and after her defeat he's notably vanished making it seem like it killed him. But it turns out he's actually reverted back into his true form of a frog. This might seen a little pointless in hindsight, since Shrek the Third kills him anyway. But his survival from the incident was integral for the reluctant heirs to the throne, Shrek and Fiona, to pass their roles as the new royalty of Far, Far Away onto Arthur in the third film, for he mentions Arthur on his death bed.
- In Puss in Boots, when Puss is trying to save his friend Humpty, the Golden Goose and the goose's mother, Puss is holding on to Humpty by only a thin rope on a broken bridge, while the Golden Goose is dangling above the distant ground with its mother, close to falling to their death. Humpty sacrifices himself to save the Golden Goose, its mother, and the town, while Humpty supposedly fell to death and cracked open. However, in the credits, it is revealed he came out alright.
- The Jonny Quest TV movie Jonny Quest vs. the Cyber Insects has a particularly silly example. During a space battle caused by Jonny recklessly charging into the midst of some enemy fighters, an exploding control panel somehow injures Race in such a way that his heart stops beating. Not even two scenes later, Race inexplicably revives with no ill effects. The scene does serve a narrative purpose though - it's a rather sobering moment for Jonny, who blames himself, and after this is when he starts acting like less of a selfish, impulsive Jerkass.
- Happens to both of the main characters in BIONICLE: Mask of Light: first, Jaller sacrifices himself to save his partner Takua, allowing him to don the titular Mask of Power and become Takanuva. Then, Takanuva merges with Makuta and sacrifices part of their life-force to bring Jaller back, but at the cost of the fusion breaking up and him disappearing. Takanuva is brought back by the other characters through a sort of ritual conducted over a weird gizmo built into the floor — it's confusing, and never explained. The Novelization rewrites the scene by having Takanuva walk out of the split fusion alive.
- At the end of The Curse of the Were-Rabbit the were-rabbit (Wallace) appears to die after a nasty fall from the top of a building. Gromit is able to bring him around with a hunk of Stinking Bishop cheese.
- In The Boxtrolls, it seems that Snatcher was successful in crushing the boxtrolls to death, but it turns out they escaped in the middle of Eggs' speech, and they return in time to save the day.
- The Book of Life:
- One bite from Xibalba's snake causes this, as Manolo finds out the hard way.
- In the climax, Manolo appears to die again after trapping himself and Chakal under a church bell to contain an explosion that would have destroyed San Angel. He's saved by Joaquin giving him the Medal of Everlasting Life beforehand.
- In Home (2015), it momentarily looks like Oh was crushed by the Gorg's machine, but there was an indentation in it large enough for him to fit without being crushed.
- The Incredibles deconstructs the realistic emotional toll of such an event. Bob spends an entire night in despair thinking that Syndrome shot down the plane killing Helen and the kids. This sends him into a grieving rage after Mirage frees him and he's quite willing to kill her. She is saved only because she reveals his family is still alive. Later, we see that the plane incident has left Bob emotionally raw. He is irrationally adamant about facing the Omnidroid alone since he cannot deal with possibility of losing his family again.
- In Minions, it seems as if Kevin exploded after swallowing Scarlet's bomb. However, the explosion only shrunk him back down to his normal size (minus his overalls.)
- In The Secret of Kells, there's a double example. Abbot Cellach locks his nephew Brendan and fellow monk Brother Aidan in the scriptorium to protect them during a Northmen attack. It doesn't work, and when Cellach sees the scriptorium burning, he rushes to save them only to be attacked and left bleeding and unconscious on the ground. Brendan and Aidan manage to escape the building, but when they see Cellach lying in the snow, they believe him to be dead, and flee Kells. Cellach wakes up to see Northmen pouring from the building, and assumes his nephew is dead. The film then jumps 20 years forward to when uncle and nephew are finally reunited. Averted in that nearly every other character really does perish in the Northmen attack.
- In The Nut Job, it seems as if Surly has died after sacrificing himself to save his friends by falling down a big waterfall. When Precious and Buddy find Surly's motionless body, the latter lays down beside his unmoving friend and says his first two words: "best...friend". When all hope seems lost, Surly suddenly wakes up and hugs his rat friend tightly.
- In The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature, Buddy is knocked unconscious when he falls seemingly many stories off a balcony of the antagonist's home. Surly and Precious bring Buddy's lifeless body to Andie, who helps Surly carry Buddy into the ruined nut shop remains, and they both lay him on a big slab. Surly mourns greatly for his friend, and so do the other animals. When Precious licks Buddy as appreciation for saving her from the evil mayor's daughter, he suddenly moves. The pug licks Buddy twice more, enough to miraculously awaken him. Cue happy music, cheering, and hugs of relief.
- Near the end of Wabuu the Cheeky Raccoon, when Wabuu chops down a tree to use as a bridge, a bird's egg falls out of its nest to the ground and causes the parents to call him a "child murderer", though the hatchling emerges unharmed. Then we find out that the tree also accidentally fell on Wuschel the squirrel, and the mole declares him dead. Wabuu, however, finds out otherwise and frees him from under the fallen tree.
- Near the end of All Creatures Big and Small, Finny the Nestrian is shown to drown after failing to climb onto the ark. Turns out his species can breathe in water just fine.
- We get a brief one in the second Scary Godmother movie, The Revenge of Jimmy, when it looks like the house fell on Scary Godmother and crushed her. Skully and Bug-a-Boo are crying, while Harry rejoices. Soon enough, Scary Godmother re-appears (having merely lost her leggings before the house came down), commenting on how sweet it is that Skully and Bug-a-Boo miss her.
- There are two in Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: The Super Adventure. First, Wolffy is eaten by Cha Cha, only for him and Weslie to be pooped back out when the latter uses some of Mr. Slowy's medicines on Cha Cha. Then, Weslie himself ends up stuck in Cha Cha's flooded headquarters, but comes back completely fine later after he is deposited in the toxins from Granny Snail and uses some enlargement pills left behind by Wolffy to return himself back to his normal size.
- Happens in Ant Z when protagonist Z appears to have drowned before being resuscitated by Bala.
- Eliot in Open Season appears to have been shot by Shaw's gun while saving Boog. He gets better.
- Kate from Alpha and Omega gets hit in a stampede, and is unresponsive. The two wolf packs howl in unity over her loss. This brings her back.
- Happens in The Magic Roundabout (2005) with Zebedee and Florence:
- Zebedee ends up trapped on a cliff by Zeebad who then collapses it, causing Zebedee to plummet into the abyss where he was presumed dead much to their grief and dismay of Dougal and the gang and the delight by Zeebad. Fortunately after Zeebad gets re-imprisoned, it is revealed that Zebedee had survived the fall, but is still trapped in the ice until he is able to break free when it starts to melt.
- Florence appears to have died from hypothermia after being trapped in the frozen roundabout throughout the film much to Dougal's grief. Luckily to Dougal's relief, she was only unconscious where he continues licking her face to wake Florence up until she is fully conscious.
- Smurfette from Smurfs: The Lost Village is reduced to clay after her defeat of Gargamel but is restored by The Power of Friendship''.
Literature
- In Caraval, Scarlett watches Tella and Julian die on the last day of the game, but they are both brought back to life at the very end.
- Discworld:
- In the Discworld novel Moving Pictures, Gaspode the Wonder Dog makes a Heroic Sacrifice to save the Disc from the Things from the Dungeon Dimensions. In the first draft he was killed, but this was rewritten following reader feedback, and Gaspode went on to become a recurring character. Given the theme of the book, and the method used to revive Gaspode... possible Lampshade Hanging?
- In Lords and Ladies, it looks like Granny Weatherwax has given her life to help defeat the Queen of the Elves. When Nanny Ogg and Magrat go through Granny's personal affects, they find an envelope with a piece of card in it: Granny's old "I ATEN'T DEAD" sign. Nanny realizes this means Granny wasn't dead, but off Borrowing (in this case, a swarm of bees).
- Maurice and Dangerous Beans both die in the finale of the first Discworld children's book, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents. Maurice survives because Cats Have Nine Lives, and Dangerous Beans survives because Maurice offers two of his lives to Balance Death's Books.
- Harry Potter:
- In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Harry is struck by a Killing Curse, but does not really die due to unknowingly becoming an extra Horcrux. However, his friends back at Hogwarts do not know this at first and fear that their hero is gone for good.
- In the same book, Hagrid is apparently killed by an acromantula in the Battle of Hogwarts, but he later turns up with the Death Eaters in the Forbidden Forest as a prisoner.
- Ginny toward the end of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets via being imprisoned in the Chamber and having the life force sucked out of her. Harry manages to undo that by destroying a Horcrux.
- In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Harry is struck by a Killing Curse, but does not really die due to unknowingly becoming an extra Horcrux. However, his friends back at Hogwarts do not know this at first and fear that their hero is gone for good.
- Magical Girl Raising Project isn't afraid to kill people by the dozens, but occasionally someone manages to survive a seemingly fatal attack.
- At the end of the first arc, Ripple seems to have died from her injuries sustained against Swim Swim, but Snow White's Lucky Rabbit's Foot activates and helps her survive.
- In Limited, Ripple is seemingly killed by Postarie via being stabbed by her own shurikens and falling down a hole, but her wounds weren't quite fatal, and Pythie Frederica managed to give her first aid.
- Prism Cherry in JOKERS is thought to have died in the control room when Shufflin attacked, but she's saved by Frederica just in time, allowing her to heal and return for the climax.
- Stanczyka in JOKERS is thought to have blown herself up to stall Joker Shufflin. In actuality, Frederica managed to pull her out.
- Princess Deluge is seemingly slashed to death by Snow White in the climax of QUEENS, but she's able to hang on long enough for Mana to give her medical aid.
- In The Night Land, after the hero has been through hell and back to bring his beloved home, and despite the best efforts of the Redoubt's finest doctors, she dies anyway and has a tremendous funeral attended by the entire human race. Then she comes back to life without explanation.
- In Voltaire's Candide, roughly every few pages a character is "brought back to life". Lampshaded in the musical version with the song "You Were Dead, You Know."
- In The Lord of the Rings, Frodo is stabbed by an Orc and stung by Shelob, appearing dead both times, but is saved by his mithril armor and Shelob using paralytic poison instead of a fatal one, respectively. Gandalf dies from his exertions after killing the Balrog, but is sent back by Ilúvatar to finish his task.
- Two examples from The Night Gardener:
- Molly doesn't tell Kip the last thing she saw of their parents partially because the letters the tree has been giving her made her hope that their parents' seemingly real death wasn't real at all. Later in the book, she has to come to terms with the fact that they really are gone.
- Near the end, Kip grabs the Night Gardener and throws himself into the river surrounding the Windsor estate to give his sister and the rest of the Windsors time to destroy the tree. Alastair comes back to the others carrying the seemingly drowned Kip in his arms. However, as Molly is mourning over him, he coughs out the water and wakes up.
- Valashu in the Ea Cycle narrates his own Disney Death in first person. He falls into afterlife for half a page or so and then gets promptly resurrected. After all, he couldn't very well write about his adventures if he remained dead.
- In The Wheel of Time series, the climactic battle with Rahvin resulted in the death of some major characters. Rand proceeded to use really powerful balefire to kill Rahvin, which killed him irrevocably and had the convenient effect of undoing everything the villain did in the last hour or so. Everybody's okay!
- In Robert Aspirin's Myth Adventures series, it was almost a Running Gag to have a character (usually Aahz) appear to be dead/gone and then reappear later as a surprise...
- A Song of Ice and Fire manages to * combine* this with being a series where Anyone Can Die. Multiple chapters end with a POV character seemingly "dying"... Only for a later chapter to reveal that they survived. Combined with the fact that lots of people really DO die, this has spawned a ludicrous number of Epileptic Trees.
- Guy Gavriel Kay's The Lions of Al-Rassan wrings every possible bit of suspense, drama and angst out of Diego Belmonte's death... then Ishak the legendary doctor appears and "wishes to examine the boy."
- Jurassic Park ends with Ian Malcolm apparently dead, even referring to the difficulty the others are having in getting his body sent back to America for burial... But in The Lost World (1995) we learn that he survived.
- In Mossflower, the big final duel ends with it looking like Martin is dead since he's covered in blood as well as hundreds of cuts from Tsarmina's claws. But he's just in a coma and is healed up by the last chapter.
- Stormbringer in Avalon: Web of Magic seems to die at the end of the sixth book, but the ninth book reveals that she was just trapped on an astral plane... or something. Regardless, she's alive.
- This also happens to Ozzie in the twelfth book. For such a sunshine and rainbows series, it manages to pull off this trope amazingly convincingly.
- Peter Pan:
- Tinker Bell pulls one of these off when she makes a Heroic Sacrifice to save Peter. Clap Your Hands If You Believe in fairies!
- Wendy lies seemingly dead after being mistaken for a bird and shot with an arrow by one of the Lost Boys. But the arrow turns out to have only pierced an acorn button she was wearing and presumably caused her to faint from fear.
- Cruelly played with in Deeper of the Tunnels series. The hero's brother Cal appears to get a bridge dropped on him halfway through. However, he is later discovered to be Only Mostly Dead and is able to recover. He rejoins the other heroes for the climax... only to die in a hail of bullets at the end.
- In R.A. Salvatore's Drizzt novels set in the Forgotten Realms, this happens a lot. Out of the five heroes, Regis is the only one of them who hasn't been presumed dead at least once.
- The Chinese novel Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre has one of The Hero's love interest, Yin Li, is killed off by another love interest who turns evil, and get buried under the sand after the protagonist finds out the following morning, but she survives, and reappears around the later part of the novel.
- The rat in one picture book of The House that Jack Built.
- In Dragon Bones, Oreg is revealed to have survived the death of his body at the end of the novel. Turns out, it was not his real body, that was buried somewhere else, and apparently in a coma. His father seems to have kept it there after binding his soul to castle Hurog. It Makes Sense in Context.
- Agent Pendergast novels
- In Dance of Death, the character of Margo Green, who was the main character in the authors' first two books, is stabbed and apparently killed by Pendergast's brother Diogenes. The very end of the novel reveals that she survived and Pendergast allowed the rest of the world to believe her dead so that his brother would not attempt to target her again. As revealed in the next book, this fails, but she still lives anyway.
- In Cemetery Dance, Pendergast is shot by the novel's antagonist and eventually collapses from blood loss. The final chapter makes it seem like he passed away from his wounds for 2-3 pages before revealing he's sitting there alive and well in his hospital bed.
- Early on in Cold Vengeance, Pendergast is shot by Judson Esterhazy and is left to die in the Moores of Scotland. Nearly a hundred pages is spent with the supporting cast mourning his "death" before it's revealed he survived, though he's still very weak from the affair.
- At the end of White Fire Pendergast's protegee Corrie Swanson is seemingly burned to death by an arsonist prompting an enraged Pendergast to hunt the killer. After his death, it's discovered Corrie freed herself and got to safety - the burnt corpse was actually an different victim whose corrupt actions were responsible for a lot of the events of the book.
- Catching Fire: Peeta Mellark after walking knife-first into a force field during the Quarter Quell.
- Legacy of the Dragokin has three examples:
- Rana is crucified at one point but was Only Mostly Dead and so she survived with help.
- Kalak is yanked underwater by a squid monster and would have drowned if not for his deal with Mordak.
- One of the goblins is squashed by Ravage's corpse and stops breathing, but was only unconscious. He comes too soon after.
- In BIONICLE Chronicles #4: Tales of the Masks, Pohatu is presumed dead after being buried in a collapsed cave. The even softens the ice-hearted Kopaka so much that he's ready to hand over the Mask of Shielding he's found the cave to Pohatu's people... and Pohatu's there to take it from him, apparently having survived the cave-in thanks to the mask extending its power over him before the rubble hit.
- The Book of Lost Things: The Huntsman, who returns safe and sound at the end after apparently being killed by the Loups early on.
- In This Immortal, Cassandra, protagonist Conrad's wife, allegedly dies in an earthquake which lays waste to the general area she and Conrad live in. It turns out she was out on a boat during the quake and miraculously survived.
- Although Anyone Can Die in Warrior Cats, this does appear a few times.
- Hollyleaf appears to die at the end of Sunrise, after running into a collapsing underground tunnel. We don't find out about her survival for five books. She's later Killed Off for Real, one book after she returns.
- In Shattered Sky, Twigpaw appears to die when she is struck by a car. It turns out she had only been knocked unconscious, and had survived the initial impact. Justified in that although the search patrol doesn't find her body, they do find significantly large traces of her blood and fur where it happened (identified by scent), and it was safe to assume that she had been killed. Also, Twigpaw would've died of her injuries if not for her getting rescued by a human veterinarian.
- In the eighth Franny K. Stein book, titled Bad Hair Day, Franny's dog Igor attempts to use hair care products to defeat a pair of giant monsters mutated from Franny's pigtails gorging themselves on Franny's growth formula, only to get swallowed alive by one of them. Franny initially thinks Igor has died, but is later proven wrong when Igor uses scissors to snip his way out of the pigtail monster that ate him, but not before cutting off his own fur to prevent getting swallowed again.
- Little Women: While Jo and Meg are watching over the sleeping, scarlet fever-racked Beth through the night while also waiting for their mother to come home, a change suddenly comes over Beth – her fever flush fades away and her face turns peaceful. For a few moments, Jo thinks her sister has died. But then their housekeeper Hannah check her vital signs and reveals that just the opposite is true – her fever has finaly broken and she's on the road to recovery. Sadly, she never fully recovers and really does die several years later.
- Retired Witches Mysteries: In book 2, Brian is believed dead at the hands of the sea witch, to the point where his family even holds a funeral... where Dorothy, unable to stand it, breaks into his coffin and kisses him, which brings him out of his death-like state and leaves him very confused about what's going on.
- Bazil Broketail: In the fourth novel's finale, he gets knocked down into a volcano's crater by the combined efforts of Bazil and Relkin. In truly Disney-esque fashion, it is even mentioned that his dying scream could be heard for a long time on his way down.
- Goblins in the Castle: Herky, who falls out the window with the evil sorcerer Ishmaelnote while clinging to his shoulder. When he turns up alive (to William and Fauna's great relief), he explains that he jumped free, clung to the wall and climbed back up to the window.
Music
- The 19th century Irish comic ballad "Finnegan's Wake" (which also provided inspiration for James Joyce's novel of the same name) is about an Dublin worker named Tim Finnegan who resurrects at his funeral after some whiskey (Water of Life in Irish) pours over him by mistake.
- The girl in I Fight Dragons second album The Near Future dies shortly after her, the boy, and her grandfather escape the complex. As the boy morns, he manages to reverse the link between him and her, returning all her powers and bringing her back to life.
Music Videos
- A rather nasty example comes in Michael Jackson's Ghosts. His hero, Maestro, asks the mob of kids and grown-ups (the latter wanted to run him out of town) if they still want him to leave; while only the evil mayor does, Maestro agrees to go and smashes himself into the floor, crumbling into dust before the horrified crowd's eyes and reducing one of the boys to tears. The mayor is happy to be rid of him and makes to leave, but then the Maestro (in his ghoul form) appears as a giant face in the doorway, and the mayor runs away screaming, smashing through a window. Turns out Maestro just wanted to scare everybody, and the crowd is happy... except for viewers who realize the Fridge Logic that the mayor might be actually be dead or at least horribly injured, and that the hero traumatized everybody just to trick one person who (by that point) had a darn good reason for wanting him out of town — he'd been the victim of magical torture by the Maestro.
Myths & Religion
- Norse Mythology: After Ragnarok. The world is devastated and everyone is dead. Wait, there are survivors?...
- "The Death of Koschei the Deathless": Prince Ivan gets killed by the titular villain. Fortunately, his brothers-in-law are wizards and can bring him back to life.
Pro Wrestling
- In a rare combination of both kayfabe AND real-life, Vince McMahon's limo blew up with him inside it at the conclusion of one episode of WWE Raw in 2007. This was supposed to have been the "death" of the Mr. McMahon character, but real-life circumstances involving the very, very real death of Chris Benoit, forced Vince back on television to address the fans personally, where he admits that the limo explosion WAS in fact, meant to be the death of his "Mr. McMahon" character. Of course, Mr. McMahon has since been "resurrected" and up to his usual brutal boss ways.
- The Undertaker loves this trope. How many times has he been kayfabe killed, only to inexplicably come back very much alive to terrorize his opponents when everyone thought he was gone for good?
Radio
- In an episode of The Shadow called "The Blind Beggar Dies", The Shadow suspected that Spike and Marty were setting a trap for him, so he stood behind them and use "ventriloquism" to make his voice sound like it was near the door, tricking them into thinking that they killed him.
Tabletop Games
- In Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 this is what happens to the named characters in most narratives accompanying games - they are knocked out, sent through accidental warp portals, teleported away just before death, badly wounded but recovered by medics after the battle, temporarily banished to the Realm of Chaos or any number of fates that can be recovered from. It even makes it clear in the rules that casualties don't automatically equate to dead. When a character dies, it's usually a major event or storyline progression and doesn't stop them being used in historical refights, but this is strongly tempered with Status Quo Is God (as well as the fact that if the characters stay alive, people will keep buying the models),
- Characters in Rocket Age are able to use their story points to dodge death or defeat, although at the cost of a new bad trait. Because of this any villain the heroes didn't see die by their own hand can be easily be brought back by the Game Master at a dramatic moment.
Theatre
- In the opera Paul Bunyan, Hel Helson, suffering from an inferiority complex, is egged on by his four cronies to fight with Paul. Paul wins, of course, and Helson is knocked unconscious. A sort of funeral procession ensues. Then Helson wakes up, makes friends with Paul, and dismisses the cronies.
- Philip Lombard gets one of these in the stage version of And Then There Were None.
- Elphaba and Fiyero in Wicked, who fake their deaths and leave Oz, never able to return, although Glinda and all other denizens remain in the dark about this. Doubles as an example of Spared by the Adaptation, since in the novel, both do indeed die.
- Twistedly raised as a possibility in the 2013 musical Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as part of the show's Black Comedy. In this version, Augustus, Violet, and Veruca and her dad all face the possibility of Death by Adaptation. Augustus is swept away by a pipe to be turned into fudge; Violet, having swelled into a giant blueberry, explodes in a shower of purple glitter; Veruca and her dad are sent down a garbage chute to an incinerator. According to Willy Wonka, Augustus and Violet can be rescued and restored, respectively, so she could get a Disney Death. But that's only going to happen offstage. If she's lucky. And she may be Not Quite Back to Normal if she is. The audience will never know...
- In Der Freischütz, the second act finale begins in a mood of tragic horror with Agathe having been seemingly shot to death by Max. Thanks to a Protective Charm, she survives.
- In both the musical and the movie versions of RENT, Mimi apparently dies at the end, after living on the streets for a long time while suffering from HIV. But after Roger uses the Power of Love/the Power of Rock, she suddenly comes back to life again, her fever broken and not delirious anymore. Only in the Dutch production is she Killed Off for Real. Subverted with Angel's actual death. In the opera La Bohème, which Rent was based on, Mimi actually did die from tuberculosis, although Schaunard (Angel) did not die at all.
- Some productions of The Nutcracker have the title character be stabbed by the Mouse King near the end of their battle, making the later's death either a Mutual Kill or caused by Clara's thrown shoe, and then have Clara mourn over his body for a moment before he not only revives, but turns into a prince.
Theme Parks
- In Waterworld: A Live Sea War Spectacular at the Universal Studios parks, it at first appears that the Mariner is killed when the Deacon shoots him with a bazooka, but a few mere minutes later, he rises up out of the water and ready to return back to the battle.
Visual Novels
Web Animation
- HTF +: Flippy sacrifices himself by blowing up the building with the HTF zombies in it to save Flaky in HTF+Amnesia 2, in HTF+Amnesia 3/HTF+LG 4 he comes back.
- In episode 3 of Ark Angels by Qem-95, Nick jumps in front of a bullet that The Masked Man throws at the viewer, leaving the bullet to impale his clockwork heart and all the cogs and springs fall out causing him to rust up. However, Bang brings him back to the office and fixes him. If you click him, while he's leaping, he falls to the ground and the bullet hits you instead. When the screen goes back to normal, your surrounded by Nick, Qem, Bang, Malcolm and The Masked Man, who turns out to be Soldier.
Webcomics
- Achilles Shieldmaidens: The narration during the prologue leads us to believe that Sofia Gagarin died in a Last Stand in Neo Manhattan during the Alien Invasion. Badly wounded? Yes. Dead? No: she's "Scourge", the pilot of the Achilles that saves Artemis and Max at the start of chapter 1.
- Earthsong opens with a battle in which a man named Richard is stabbed through the heart and disappears, enraging his allies as though he had actually been killed and alarming the newly-awoken protagonist, Willow. Richard's "killers" explain that the sword actually destroyed his soulstone, simply returning him to his home planet. This is the typical way to "die" on Earthsong, making it rather shocking when actual deaths occur. (However, it is sometimes the case that they are returning to imminent death on their world anyway.)
- Set seems to be have been killed in Sonic the Comic – Online! by being beaten to death by Tekno who has been experiencing a Sanity Slippage. However it turns out she inexplicably missed any major organs and he survived.
Web Original
- Dream appears to die in his Minecraft Manhunt videos but doesn't, many times.
Web Videos
- In Atop the Fourth Wall: The Movie, Allen is killed during Comicron-1's fight against the Caelestis. However, when Linkara learns that Europa's surface has a healing effect thanks to the Plot Hole, he brings Allen's corpse down to bring him back to life.
- At the end of The Cartoon Man, Karen is fatally wounded by Simon's knife, but Roy manages to save her by transforming her into a cartoon with black ink.
- Critical Role has a subversion in its first campaign: during a battle with the archlich Vecna, Vax'ildan is struck with a deadly spell that disintegrated him, rendering him Deader than Dead as there is no way to revive someone from disintegration (other party members were killed, but subsequently revived using Pike's holy magic as their bodies were still intact). Some time after, Vax returns, alive and well...at a price: the Raven Queen has struck a bargain with him, allowing him to return to life for long enough to defeat Vecna. After the party succeeds in banishing Vecna, the Raven Queen comes to collect on her end of the bargain. Vax graciously departs with the Raven Queen after saying his farewells to his friends, this time for good (save for a brief return to send well-wishes to his sister Vex on her wedding day, courtesy of Scanlan's last use of the Wish spell).
Spoofs
Advertising
- A "Crosses the Line Twice" computer ad showed how horrible a businessman's life was before he got his new computer, including a staff member shouting "Business is terrible!" before jumping out though the window, and being called that his wife left him and his dog died. After he gets his computer, his wife calls him that she's back and the dog was pretending, and the businessman comes back in a wheelchair and bandages, saying how business is picking up.
Comic Strips
- Done with bears in The Far Side. In the middle of a funeral, the "corpse" sits up and berates the mourners, "I was hibernating, you idiots! Don't you ever check for a pulse?"
Films — Animation
- Near the end of the Animaniacs movie Wakko's Wish, Dot gets hit by one of King Salazar's cannonballs and dies in Yakko's arms... then she says "I'm feeling better now" right when Wakko reaches the wishing star. Yakko says her acting lessons must really be paying off....
- Kung Fu Panda: After the climactic battle with Tai Lung, Po realizes Master Shifu is still injured. He rushes back to the Jade Palace to tell him Tai Lung has been defeated, and as Shifu peacefully drifts off Po begs him not to die. Then Shifu abruptly wakes up again and snaps at Po.
Shifu: I'm NOT dying, you idiot!
- Parodied in the Christmas Special Robbie the Reindeer in Hooves of Fire: Robbie's mentor, Old Jingle, appears to die tragically in his arms. Then Jingle starts snoring.
Puppet Shows
- In Muppet Treasure Island, Long John Silver tells Samuel Arrow, played by safety fanatic Sam the Eagle, one of the boats may not be safe, and tells him to go out to sea to make sure it is safe. He then tells Kermit (The Captain) that he was lost at sea. He comes back some time later and tells Jim, Gonzo, and Rizzo "Not to trust that Silver fellow."
Gonzo: Now he tells us....
- In the Projected Man episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, Crow develops the touch of death the main character in the movie has — and accidentally kills Mike when he shakes his hand during one of the host segments! This actually sticks for a bit; they return to the theater with Mike's corpse just propped up in his seat. After his body keeps falling on Servo, Crow shakes his hand again which brings him back to life. Upon learning they're still watching the crummy movie, Mike actually wishes Crow had left him dead.
