Characters that die in one episode or movie then come back in a later one, often without explaination.
Kenny from South Park
Casey & Andy keep killing each other (great web comic, if you don’t know it.)
Ming The Merciless always died at the end of Flash Gordon, but there he was back again in the next serial.
The Master (Anthony Ainley version) “so, you escaped from Castrovalva.”
Any others? I’m not interested in death & rebirth when central to the plot, so don’t bother listing Spock, ET or Jesus
Marvel Comics villains used to be prone to multiple deaths – I remember the Red Skull and Modok dying and coming back (with no explanation, unless I missed that ish).
The classic bad film Space Mutiny has a character die in one scene, then has her working at her desk in the next. Probably she worked for Dilbert’s boss.
Old Homer: Which one’s the mouse
Supreme Court Justice Bart: Itchy
Old Homer: Itchy’s a jerk
In Sandman comics, Cain would kill Able over and over again and he would always come back, of course they were part of the Dreaming and not true people.
Felix Lighter CIA agent from the James Bond movies was killed in Live and Let Die, but showed up in at least one other movie (Never Say Never Again)
There’s probably a lot of examples in DC comics, but the only one I can think of offhand is Dr. Polaris. He was killed in an issue of Green Lantern and then showed up in the Monitor’s satillite during Crisis. Of course, since the Monitor took heroes and villains from differejnt times, he could have taken him from before his death.
The staff of Sealab 2021 usually ended their show by blowing up their research station.
Master Shake of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and his neighbor Carl, have each died several gruesome deaths, only to invariably be included in the next episode with no explanation or even acknowledgement that the previous episode’s events had happened.
Jason from Friday XIII parts 1 through 43. Just because the guy’s crazy doesn’t mean he should be able to survive hatchets to the face, burning, drowning, and gunshots (all in the same movie), but he always did.
Heh, and he started doing that in the movie, where one of Ra’s guards shoot him, and then he was brought back in the Sarcophogus, apparantly so Ra could gloat at him.
Yeah, I can’t even remember how many times he died in God Emperor of DUNE. And such variety of deaths too.
Pretty sure he was also in Goldeneye, although I maintain that there may be multiple American agents who go by Felix, just as there are apparantly multiple British agents who go by James Bond.
Ensign Harry Kim died on Voyager at least once, but they got a spare Kim from an alternate universe (shortly before that Kim’s entire crew died when that Voyager self-destructed to take out an attatched alien ship).
Ra’s Al Ghul was in a number of situations on Batman where his death was apparant, but he would keep coming back in later episodes (including one episode of Batman Beyond where he had managed to take over his daughter’s body)
Chris Elliot died in several episodes of “Get A Life”, including one where neighborhood kids used his dismembered head as a soccer ball. He always came back without any explanation.
I seem to half remember an interview where either he or his writers admitted to lifting that gag from “The Young Ones”.