# You can't make a Sequel -- You killed off the Character! **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 3, 2020, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670 "2020-11-03T19:56:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![BlankSlate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blankslate/32/80_2.png) [@BlankSlate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlankSlate)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2020, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/41 "2020-11-04T00:28:13Z")
> [@F.U.Shakespeare](#): > > Nitpick: Sherilyn Fenn. Sheryl Lee played Laura Palmer/Maddy Ferguson. Sherilyn Fenn played Audrey Horne. ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2020, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/42 "2020-11-04T01:18:22Z")
Thank you (and Czarcasm). I was just a casual viewer. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2020, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/43 "2020-11-04T02:53:03Z")
In _Cat People,_ Irena, the cat person of the title, is killed in the end. When they made the sequel _Curse of the Cat People_, Irena comes back as a ghost/imaginary friend of the daughter of the couple in the first movie. The sequel really wasn’t a sequel in the usual sense, a psychological drama with some horror tacked on. The Curse is the fear that the daughter might suffer from psychological issues. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2020, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/44 "2020-11-04T05:32:20Z")
James Bond (and everyone else) died in _Casino Royale_ (the one worth watching). That’s why I don’t watch Bond flicks. The Bond-not-being-dead business is just too big a plot hole for me to get past. Shoulda just left it at that and made 37 sequels to _Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang_. ---
**Author:** ![kitap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b9e5f3/32.png) [@kitap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kitap)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2020, 11:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/45 "2020-11-04T11:39:20Z")
The brothers Winchester on **Supernatural** are completely unable to stay dead. If Dean really died all those times in _Mystery Spot_ he’s died hundreds if not thousands of times. If that was just an illusion it’s still somewhere around 7. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2020, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/46 "2020-11-04T12:17:09Z")
> [@kitap](#): > > The brothers Winchester on **Supernatural** are completely unable to stay dead. If Dean really died all those times in _Mystery Spot_ he’s died hundreds if not thousands of times. If that was just an illusion it’s still somewhere around 7. Rory in _Doctor Who_ died a lot. He got better. > [@](#): > > **Rory** : River said that this place would be erased from time. It never existed. If this place never existed, _what_ did I fall off? > > **Amy** : You think you’ll just come back to life? > > **Rory** : When _don’t_ I ?! And of course the Doctor himself died **a lot** in one particular episode. I mean, skulls everywhere. It was very untidy. ---
**Author:** ![Author\_Balk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Author\_Balk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Author_Balk)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2020, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/47 "2020-11-04T12:33:32Z")
Another ghost was John Gielgud (Hobson) in Arthur 2: On the Rocks. ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2020, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/48 "2020-11-04T13:03:44Z")
Is it too silly to bring up Jason from Friday the 13th Part \_\_? I think it’s worth a mention because the FT13 franchise, I think, basically invented the trope of the omniscient evil thing that keeps getting killed but comes back to life for a sequel. At first the writers tried to play it off in a non-supernatural way (Jason didn’t die, he ran off into the woods and grew to adulthood living off the land!), but eventually it just became ridiculous (Jason’s grave is dug up by some teenagers for kicks (part IV?), and his rotten corpse is struck by lightning, bringing it back to life!) ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2020, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/49 "2020-11-04T13:31:59Z")
Spike fell in love with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and eventually died. Then, Spike appears in Angel season 5 very much alive. ---
**Author:** ![gdave](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gdave/32/3683_2.png) [@gdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gdave)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2020, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/50 "2020-11-04T14:00:33Z")
More to the point, _Buffy_ died in in the WB series finale, and was then literally resurrected when the show was picked up by UPN for two more seasons. Angel also died, went to hell, and rose again, to be a supporting character for one more season before getting his own spin-off series as the main character. ---
**Author:** ![echoreply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/echoreply/32/3641_2.png) [@echoreply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/echoreply)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2020, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/51 "2020-11-04T15:04:01Z")
Kenny. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2020, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/52 "2020-11-04T15:31:13Z")
The Universal horror movies of the 1930s and 1940s did this a LOT, as noted several times above. Part of it, of course, was that you needed to bring closure at the end of the movie by killing off the monster. But it’s still popular, so you find a way to bring it back for the sequel. Or, like Ygor, the character is too good, so you keep bringing them back. With Frankenstein’s monster, they basically just decided that he was indestructible. He got burned at the end of _Frankenstein_, but he was saved by falling into the water-filled cellar underneath (he DID look different in that film – the makeup indicates that he was burned, but survived. Also, Karloff was eating better with his new success, and and put on a little weight.). At the end of _Bride_ he was “blown to atoms” (as Dr. Pretorius put it), but he apparently wasn’t (or else got better), because Ygor found the remains. At the end of _Son_ he fell into a sulfur pit, but for _Ghost_ they dug him out of the now-solidified sulfur. At the end he gets trapped in a burning building, but apparently had the good luck to fall into water again, because in _Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman_ Larry Talbot find him frozen in ice. At the end of that movie he’s traped in a deluge of water and , wouldn’t you know it, gets frozen in ice again. , where’s he’s found for _House of Frankenstein_. At the end of that, he carries the Mad Doctor Niemann into a swamp and gets swallowed up. But he gets buried in the mud and, years, later, ends up in the sluggish outflow still well-preserved (although Nieman is reduced to a skeleton. Frankenstein is evidently very resistant to decay). At the end, he gets caught in another burning building, but you know how well that works at getting rid of him. At the beginning of _Abbott and Costello Meet_ he’s been found in unspecified circumstances, miraculously unburned. At the end of that movie, he gets caught on a burning pier, but he falls through into the water below. If there had been another Universal film after that, they would’ve found him, probably frozen in ice (even though the lake was in Florida, but who cares?) They liked Dwight Frye so well as the twisted assistant Fritz in the original _Frankenstein_ that they brought him back again as the twisted assistant in _Bride of Frankenstein_. But Fritz had been killed – this one was named Karl. It was probably just a coincidence that he looked the same. They didn’t even try to pass him off as a relative. _Dracula_ got killed by having a stake driven into his heart at the end of the original film, although we don’t see it. This was a highlight of the stage play, where Dracula dissolves into dust when staked onstage (a bit of stage magic done with a trick coffin – it’s not how the Count was killed in Stoker’s novel), but it was thought too graphic for film audiences at the time. We don’t even hear the stake being driven in. The death-by-staking is re-iterated in the sequel, _Dracula’s Daughter_, which brought back Edward Van Sloan as Van Helsing. But we still didn’t get to see it. (The Spanish language version of _Dracula_ was a little more explicit, but not much). When they resurrected the Count for _House of FRankenstein_ they did so by pulling the stake from where his heart had been in the coffin with his bones, and he;s miraculously resurrected. This is, I think, something new in vampire lore – nobody had ever suggested that a staking could be un-done, especially after the body had dissolved. But filmmakers do weird things when called upon to revive a character. Another vampire with a different name wouldn’t have done – they needed the original Dracula (even if he wasn’t Bela Lugosi). People liked this idea so much that, when Marvel started its comic book _Tomb of Dracula_ (supposedly scripted by Gerry Conway, but actually by Roy Thomas and Stan Lee), that’s how they brought him back to the modern world. ---
**Author:** ![ZonexandScout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zonexandscout/32/544_2.png) [@ZonexandScout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZonexandScout)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2020, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/53 "2020-11-04T17:08:41Z")
If you allow books, consider John Rambo’s death at the end of _First Blood_. As Morrell later explained, he was convinced by his agent/friends to simply ignore Rambo’s death when he wrote the sequel. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2020, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/54 "2020-11-04T17:19:32Z")
> [@ZonexandScout](#): > > If you allow books, consider John Rambo’s death at the end of _First Blood_ . As Morrell later explained, he was convinced by his agent/friends to simply ignore Rambo’s death when he wrote the sequel. The same thing happened with Gary K. Wolf’s novel _Who Censored Roger Rabbit?_ Roger passes away at the end of the novel, but after the movie _Who Framed Roger Rabbit_ came out (with a greatly changed plot), Wolf restored Roger as a character in the two sequels. ---
**Author:** ![muldoonthief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muldoonthief/32/3188_2.png) [@muldoonthief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/muldoonthief)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2020, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/55 "2020-11-04T17:26:10Z")
Note that the second novel was written after the second movie was written. Morrell really just did the novelization of the Stallone/Cameron screenplay, though he did a lot of detail to the story. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2020, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/56 "2020-11-04T18:04:21Z")
> [@kaylasdad99](#): > > James Bond (and everyone else) died in _Casino Royale_ (the one worth watching). That’s why I don’t watch Bond flicks. The Bond-not-being-dead business is just too big a plot hole for me to get past. > > Shoulda just left it at that and made 37 sequels to _Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang_. You’re saying the David Niven version was the one worth watching? That was a not-funny bore-fest. ---
**Author:** ![TCMF-2L](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tcmf-2l/32/16553_2.png) [@TCMF-2L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TCMF-2L)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2020, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/57 "2020-11-04T18:15:58Z")
There is an easier way… In the UK we had the very long running TV Crime show **Taggart** about the tough, no nonsense Scottish copper DCI (Detective Chief Inspector) Jim Taggart. Taggart was portrayed by Actor **Mark McManus** from the debut in 1983 until McManus’s death in 1995. The producers took the straightforward approach. They acknowledged on screen the character had died. Then just continued making the show without Taggart anymore. The show was still called Taggart but had no character of that name and on they went until 2010. TCMF-2L ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2020, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/58 "2020-11-04T20:26:51Z")
There was a Roger Rabbit graphic novel that was a sequel to the movie. The weasels resurrect Judge Doom from animation drawings, because he’s a 'toon, after all. ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2020, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/59 "2020-11-04T21:43:49Z")
Rewatched the original “Evil Dead” on Halloween. When people think of “Evil Dead” they are probably remembering “Evil Dead 2; Dead by Dawn”, which was basically a remake of the original with a bigger budget and more humor. Classic touches like Ash’s chainsaw for a hand, featured prominently in the “Ash vs. Evil Dead” series, are from 2. Oh yeah, and Ash was killed at the end of the original Evil Dead, I had forgotten that. At least it was strongly implied, with Ash on the front porch and the demon-eye camera view rushing at him from inside the cabin. Maybe it was just a bats-eye view. In 2 he stayed alive to appear again in ‘Army of Darkness’ and ‘Ash vs. Evil Dead’. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2020, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/60 "2020-11-04T23:02:23Z")
In the movie series, _The Falcon,_ George Sanders played the title character. When he grew tired of the role, they made _The Falcon’s Brother_, where the Falcon is killed and replaced by his brother (played by Sanders’s actual brother, Tom Kennedy). This, of course, was a planned transition, but fits the question pretty well. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670.md?page=4)