# 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:** 7
**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 18, 2020, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/121 "2020-11-18T22:57:43Z")
A fourth _Matrix_ film is currently in production, starring Keanu Reeves and Carrie Anne Moss. Neo has already died twice, so maybe he exists solely in the matrix. I’m not sure how Trinity can be revived after her half-hour long death scene in _The Matrix Revolutions,_ though. ---
**Author:** ![CaptMurdock](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/captmurdock/32/11736_2.png) [@CaptMurdock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaptMurdock)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2020, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/122 "2020-12-01T00:23:19Z")
The first episode of _Hill Street Blues_ ends with the shooting of two patrolmen, Hill and Renko. Capt. Furillo gets a call late at night; he says to his lover Joyce afterward that they’ve been shot: “They’re both in intensive care.” In the original script, he says “One critical, one DOA.” The network, after screening the pilot, forced the showrunner to reshoot Furillo’s scene, as they felt Hill and Renko were two of the more likeable characters. Thing is, Charles Haid, who played Renko, did it as a favor to the showrunner Steven Bochco. He was the one who was DOA. So when the network picked up the series, they had to seriously negotiate with Haid to continue the role. That’s why in the opening credits he’s billed as “Charles Haid as Renko.” (At least that’s how it was told to me. YMMV) ---
**Author:** ![dorvann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df705f/32.png) [@dorvann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dorvann)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2020, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/123 "2020-12-01T23:44:51Z")
Maybe their deaths were actually in a simulation and there are various nested artificial realities. _The Matrix_(Simulation #1)----Zion Reality(Simulation #2)—?(other simulations perhaps)------Reality ---
**Author:** ![GreaterZamboni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/49beb7/32.png) [@GreaterZamboni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreaterZamboni)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/124 "2020-12-11T22:17:52Z")
He got better. Oops. wrong Monty Python and the Holy Grail reference. Nevermind. ---
**Author:** ![Cumberdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8c91f0/32.png) [@Cumberdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cumberdale)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2020, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/125 "2020-12-12T18:59:11Z")
Chris Elliott in Get A Life! At some point in the first season they killed off Chris, then it became a running theme for the rest of the series. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2021, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/126 "2021-01-03T14:31:33Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Authors and filmmakers have proven incredibly capable of resurrecting characters that were apparently “undeniably and reliably dead.” Sometimes it’s public clamor for the character, and sometimes it’s a desire or a need for money Sometimes the author _forgets_ he killed off a character and gets mad when you pointed this out, as what happened to me w/ Dan Simmons when I noted that having Paul Dure be resurrected in _Endymion_ was impossible given the Shrike removed Dure’s cruciform in _The Fall of Hyperion_… ‘The shrike had granted me death without killing me’. Too bad I didn’t keep his ‘leave me alone’ email, lol. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2021, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/127 "2021-01-03T14:42:23Z")
He should have simply replied with the well-known quote from Emerson: > A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. 😉   ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2021, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/128 "2021-01-03T15:05:17Z")
Stephen King would like to retort: > [@](#): > > Sometimes dead is better. Take _that_, Waldo! ---
**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:** [January 3, 2021, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/129 "2021-01-03T15:34:05Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > Sometimes the author _forgets_ he killed off a character… Hey, it happens. Authors generally don’t keep a “consistency file” to make sure they always stick to a consistent background. Just look at the plethora of examples in Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, or with Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe. It happens in movies, too. There a scene that they actually filmed for _From Russia with Love_ that they had to cut out because the character involved in the scene had been killed off several scenes earlier. > [@](#): > > A scene was cut just before Bond meets Romanova on the ferry. Bond tries to lose his mysterious pursuer and hops into a taxi. Bond takes control of the taxi’s brakes, causing the pursuing Bulgarian to run into the back of the taxi, and a third car to join the pile-up. The driver of the third car turns out to be Kerim Bey. When the angry Bulgarian protests to Bey, he is told “My friend, this is life”, while Bond makes his escape in the British Embassy’s Rolls-Royce. [Terence Young](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0950109) shot the scene ten times to get the long ash on Bey’s cigar that [Pedro Armendáriz](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000784) insisted on. It wasn’t until a private screening one week before the movie’s release that Young’s twelve-year-old son noticed that the Bulgarian had already been killed by Grant in the mosque, so it was cut. > **[From Russia with Love (1963) - Trivia - IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057076/trivia/?ref_=tt_trv_trv)** > > From Russia with Love (1963) - Trivia on IMDb: Cameos, Mistakes, Spoilers and more... ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2021, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/130 "2021-01-03T16:33:39Z")
Among the most un-kill-offable characters in fiction is iconoclastic F.B.I. agent Aloysius Pendergast in the Preston/Child novels. Marched to the edge of a deep pit, manacled, with a gun at his head…walled up in a basement tomb like Fortunato in Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado”…driven to the edge of death on a doomed ship by an evil thought form…it doesn’t matter. You know he’s going to stage a miraculous escape and return to astound his friends and enemies, always while impeccably dressed. ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2021, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/131 "2021-01-03T19:21:25Z")
This reminds me of the writers’ meeting in the movie Soapdish. When bringing back a character is suggested: “The guy was killed in an auto accident! I looked it up! He was driving in the Yukon, in a pink convertible, to visit his brother who’s an ex-con named Frances, when a tractor trailer comes along and decapitates him. You know what that means? It means he doesn’t have a head. How am I suppose to [write](https://www.moviequotes.com/topic/writing/) for a guy who doesn’t have a head?" And of course they bring him back. But for that movie, it works. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2021, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/132 "2021-01-03T21:11:03Z")
> [@Yllaria](#): > > And of course they bring him back. But for that movie, it works. It actually happened on a real soap opera first! On _As The World Turns_, the character “Shannon O’Hara” had her head cut off and shrunken by a bloodthirsty tribe…and was still able to come back several years later. ---
**Author:** ![Kamino\_Neko](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kamino_neko/32/34_2.png) [@Kamino\_Neko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamino_Neko)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2021, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/133 "2021-01-03T23:25:25Z")
> [@robardin](#): > > There was DC Comics and “[The Death of Superman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Superman)” story arc… Doesn’t really fit this thread for a couple reasons, though. 1. The Death of Superman was written with the intent of resurrecting him later. (It was done just to kick his marriage to Lois down the line so that it didn’t overlap with the same happening in the Lois & Clark TV series.) 2. Each of the four titles Superman was headlining when he died introduced a replacement Superman, so they totally had the ability to do a sequel story (rather, a followup arc), the Reign of the Supermen. ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2021, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/134 "2021-01-04T00:11:05Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > It actually happened on a real soap opera first! On _As The World Turns_ , the character “Shannon O’Hara” had her head cut off and shrunken by a bloodthirsty tribe…and was still able to come back several years later. Oh, my! Did they address how that was possible, or did they just ignore the death? ---
**Author:** ![HelenGawn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a88e4f/32.png) [@HelenGawn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HelenGawn)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2021, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/135 "2021-01-04T00:15:50Z")
Prison Break was great at this. At the end of Season 2, bad guy Kellerman turns state’s evidence to exonerate former prison doctor-turned-escapee’s girlfriend Sara of… something. While waiting in a van to be transported to a federal facility, Company assassins throw open the rear doors and open fire indiscriminately. In Season 4, turns out it wasn’t indiscriminate after all; they were springing Kellerman and welcoming back into the fold. Meanwhile, back in Season 3, escapee Lincoln receives the head of Sara in a box. In season 4 we find out that musta been Sara’s long-lost and never spoken of twin sister. (The actual twist is even dumber.) Finally, in the last regular season, Sara and her toddler son place flowers on Michael’s grave after it was earlier revealed that he had an almost-certainly-fatal heart condition. In a limited-series sequel, he got better. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2021, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/136 "2021-01-04T03:01:36Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > Among the most un-kill-offable characters in fiction is iconoclastic F.B.I. agent Aloysius Pendergast in the Preston/Child novels. And he outlived his reader, René Auberjonois. I got hooked on the audiobooks with Pendergast (had a wonderful brain… he could even concstruct a Memory Palace to help solve a mystery), and Auberjonois was the perfect voice for him. ---
**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:** [January 4, 2021, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/137 "2021-01-04T03:50:21Z")
> [@digs](#): > > And he outlived his reader, René Auberjonois. > > I got hooked on the audiobooks with Pendergast (had a wonderful brain… he could even concstruct a Memory Palace to help solve a mystery), and Auberjonois was the perfect voice for him. I listened to all of these, too. But, despite my best efforts, between the physical description and Auberjonois’ voice, I ended up picturing Agent Pendergast not as a white-suited elegant Southern Gentleman. > **[Special Agent Pendergast by frodobolson72 on DeviantArt](https://www.deviantart.com/frodobolson72/art/Special-Agent-Pendergast-31714136)** He appeared in my mind as John Zacherle, the horror movie host who died four years ago at the age of 98. [![](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Zacherle#/media/File:Zacherley.jpg) ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Zacherle#/media/File:Zacherley.jpg) ---
**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:** [January 4, 2021, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/138 "2021-01-04T18:07:40Z")
Give Damian Lewis white hair and roll camera. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2021, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/139 "2021-01-05T05:10:17Z")
> [@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. Who hasn’t died and come back in Supernatural? Bobby, Mary, Castiel, Lucifer, Rowena, Ketch, Charlie, Kevin Tran… it’s easier to list who hasn’t returned from the dead. ---
**Author:** ![kitap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b9e5f3/32.png) [@kitap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kitap)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2021, 7:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/140 "2021-01-05T07:27:26Z")
Yeah, but nobody did it more than Dean. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670.md?page=8)