Coming back from the dead is an in-joke on Days of Our Lives. Characters often comment that it’s just normal in Salem, especially when they have to explain this to a newcomer. Pretty much every major character has “died” at least once.
Don’t forget Shaxs, who is brought back with no explanation; which is the entire point.
Are Martha and Thomas Wayne the DC version of the Uncle Ben rule?
Every single time they use a transporter…
I must admit, I don’t know it first hand, it was just something I thought I’d heard referenced elsewhere, and then a quick search said it was implied JR shot himself at the end of Dallas but then they brought him back in another series?
Don’t forget Henry Wu and John Hammond - also killed in the novel but granted a stay of execution in the film series (Hammond in The Lost World and Wu in Jurassic World . Although if memory serves, Hammond is still stated as dead in the sequel novel?
Funnily enough, the lawyer Genarro and the gamekeeper Muldoon suffer exactly the opposite fate. They live in the novel but are disposed of in the film.
PS I can’t believe I forgot Spock!
I always wondered if the film had been more true to the book and killed Malcolm if the plot of the Lost World would have had Allen and Ellie doing research at the titular island, would have made a lot more sense.
In terms of characters being brought back that actually creates MASSIVE plot problems.
Police Captain Albert Wesker in the Resident Evil games. In Resident Evil 1 he’s revealed to be actually a mole planted in the police force by the evil Umbrella organization, and his purpose was to lead the S.T.A.R.S. team to fight Umbrellas secret weapon, the Tyrant monster to see if it would actually stand-up against well armed opponents. Unfortunately for Wesker he gets killed by his own creation and died in the very first game unfought.
By the 4th game Capcom realized the character was just too cool to die like a chump in the first game, so they bring him back in Code Veronica but explain his sudden appearance by saying his death was actually intentional, and dying activated some previously unknown and unmentionable super zombie virus that allows you to to run fast, dodge bullets, and have super strength.
The problem this immediately brings up and still hasn’t been answered is, why did Umbrella waste all their time making the Tyrant program if they already had this super soldier serum? Wesker is literally the most powerful person in the entire game series, and he had access to whatever gives him these powers well before the story started? It makes everything from the Tyrants to Mr. X to the Nemesis project completely moot.
The second novel was a big letdown after the first, and the first film. I own a first edition of it from when it was released as I loved the first so much, I thought it might be worth something these days but apparently not.
I should clarify that I’m looking for cases where a character was so popular that the author or other creators had to bring them back, even though the character had been undeniably killed, which is usually a bar against such revivals, Thus Ayesha, and arguably Holmes, and many of the cases listed here.
But Jon Snow’s death was a foreseen part of the Song of Ice and Fire. The multiple deaths in Star Trek:TOS were not intended to get rid of a character that they felt they had to bring back to popular acclaim.
Well, fans don’t care. If you’ve taken away one my favs, bring him back! I don’t care how flimsy the explanation may be! LOL
In the original Elmore Leonard story Fire in the Hole, and in the Justified pilot based on it as originally filmed, Givens shoots and kills Boyd Crowder.
Happily, they realised that a show that had not only Walter Goggins, but Walter Goggins and Timothy Olyphant facing off against each other, was infinitely better than a show which had neither of these things. So a hastily filmed end scene showed a living Boyd being put in an ambulance, and Givens being mildly rebuked for not shooting to kill.
This is writer/producer led rather than fan-led, but otherwise fits the “I don’t care, I like him, bring him back” ethos.
In the original pilot of ER, the character of Carol Hathaway (played by Julianna Margulies) died of suicide. Test audiences HATED that for her, nurses complained that it presented nurses in a bad light, and advertisers thought the relationship between her and Doug Ross was critical to the success of the series. Producers decided that she should recover from the attempt and Margulies was signed for the series.
Right. He supposedly shot himself at the end of the last show of the series (the Devil made him do it, literally), but we didn’t see it happen—we only heard the gun being fired. Freeze frame, cut to black. So the question of whether he survived was left open until the reboot a few years back.
I have to admit, though, that Larry Hagman (and most of the aged members of the original cast) looked like death warmed over in the reboot. I wasn’t at all surprised when he died in the show and in real life shortly after it debuted.
Every last trace of Dalek DNA in the entire multiverse was destroyed in “Journey’s End”; but the Daleks were just too iconic to stay dead.
The character of “Robin Scorpio” on General Hospital. Played by the same actress for about 20 years since she was a child. They most definitely killed her off in a lab accident a few years back…and the fans started boycotting the sponsors and protesting ABC. Guess who came back to life?
My favorite line from the movie Soapdish regarding bringing a character back: “He was decapitated!”
Not killing off a character, but sort of vaguely similar: L. Frank Baum wanted to quit writing books about Oz, so he ended the sixth Oz book (The Emerald City of Oz) with a note that it would be the last.
However, due to popular demand and financial pressures, he revived the series.
Ra’s al Ghul used the Lazarus Pits to bring them back, I guess with the hope that it would demotivate Batman.
In the pilot of Hill Street Blues, Mick Belker died. Charles Haid was only planning to be on the one episode and had another pilot in the works. But the network liked the character and the other pilot wasn’t picked up, so they added a line that he managed to pull through.
Mick Belker?
I think you mean Andy Renko, no? 