We were watching ST: DS9 Season 2 Episode 13, “Armageddon Game” when it occurred to me that the premise that a character dies in the show but isn’t really dead is used often. In that episode, Dr. Bashir and Miles O’Brien are reportedly dead. We know they aren’t because they escaped from the murderers, but we started listing other times this has happened: Ensign Ro and Geordi LaForge in ST:TNG and Spock in ST: TOS came to mind immediately.
Sometimes, the show doesn’t let you in that the character is alive, like when Booth was shot in Bones; the funeral was held to catch the shooter, and the viewer doesn’t know for certain that it was a trap. (I figured that since David Boreanaz was a producer, the writers couldn’t kill him off.)
Can you name other shows that did this?