OMG Lists

When you want to create an intense moment in your narriative, you kill off a central character. When you decide you could care less about the narriative and want to keep making money, you revive said character. Here are nine examples of movies, shows, and comic books that toyed with life, death, and the feelings of its fans.

 9- The Cast of Heroes

Does this show have the cojones to kill anyone of importance off? First Noah Bennet--a normal character with no super powers gets shot in the EYE, dies, and is revived due to an infusion of his daughter's blood. Then Nathan Petrelli is shot in a season ending cliffhanger, is prounounced dead, and miraculously recovers. Nevermind the previous season, which ended with him and his brother surviving a nuclear explosion. At least now they have a workaround, so Ali Larter can die every season, only to continue to serve on the show as a new twin of her original. Well, every season NBC allows this sinking ship to air.

8- Jean Grey (X-Men)

If you're ever in a crashing spaceship that's hurtling towards the earth at uncontrollable speeds, it's always nice to have an extremely powerful telepathic on board.  However, as we all know, sometimes after death a resurrected psychic's powers can prove to be unmanageable. This was the case for Jean Grey, who died of the ol' radiation poisoning after attempting to land a crashing shuttle, subsequently causing her to go bonkers upon her resurrection.  And as people sometimes do when they go bonkers via resurrection, Jean began setting her friends on fire with her mind.

7-Buffy

Before the movie Twilight burst onto the nerd-scene, there was another film (and subsequent t.v. series) that made the Goth kids put on a second coat of eye-liner, and that was Buffy: the Vampire Slayer.  During the end of the show's fifth season, Buffy did a swan dive into some sort of interdimensional portal, essentially killing herself and allowing the vampires to breathe easy as their slaying stopped.  That is until the start of Season 6, when Buffy returned and picked right up on her monster-massacring ways.

6- Tony Almeida (24)

On the fifth season of the thrilling, real-time series, many of the show's most beloved characters bit the big one. Former President David Palmer was shot in the neck. CTU hottie Michelle Dessler was done in via a car bomb. And everyone believed that Jack Bauer's BFF Tony Almeida had grown his last soul patch when he was injected with a lethal dose of hyoscine-pentothal. In fact, he was carted away after the incident with a sheet over his body, which is TV for "dead." What absolutely no one was aware of was that there was a secret evil henchman waiting at CTU to revive Tony, and whisk him away to a life of treachery. Oh, it should be mentioned that CTU was quarantined at the time due to a biological attack on the facility perpetrated by a completely different group,  during which half the occupants of the building had died. So we're talking about a pretty precise evil henchman.

5-Bobby Ewing (Dallas)

The entire world mourned when this oil baron was fatally hit by a car during the daytime soap opera, Dallas, and the shockwaves felt from the death of such a beloved character had profound impacts.  Fortunately, Dallas's writers saw the horrendous effects Bobby's death had, and to remedy the situation and give hope to society, they simply said it was all a dream.  Upon hearing the news, for a single day the nations of earth stopped fighting, and peace and prosperity was felt by all. 

4- Horror Movie Villains

If you combine every sequel Jason, Freddy, and Michael Myers have been in, you would get a grand total of 22 revivals.  Meaning that when it comes to resurrection, these guys make Jesus look like an amateur (you can't win them all, son-of-God).  However, Jesus has never lopped off someone's head with a pair of gardening sheers, so Christ has his upsides as well.  Ultimately, the only way to wholly kill off these unholy monsters is to not go to their movies, because a weak box-office means weakened monster-recuperation.

3-Ripley (Aliens)

There's only one thing to do when an alien queen lays her eggs in your gut, and that's to jump into a massive furnace to ensure that you kill those embryonic Martians, which is exactly what Ellen Ripley did in Alien3.  Unfortunately, in what had to be an unforeseen consequence of the extraterrestrial baby termination, Ripley perished in the furnace as well.  Luckily, in the future clones are about as easy to make as Crystal Meth in Wasilla, Alaska, so Ripley ended up returning stronger than ever in Alien Resurrection.

2-Spock (Star Trek)

It's not easy to take down an alien who is capable of incapacitating a foe with a simple pinch of the neck, but at the end of Star Trek 2:  The Wrath of Kahn, that is just what happens.  The trick to killing a Vulcan, or at least to killing Dr. Spock, is to lock him into some sort of room where his deadly, pinching fingers are unable to nip you.  Then fill the room with gas or radiation or something until he keels over.  Of course, when a character is as popular as Spock, he'll prove to be tougher to kill than the Highlander, hence the good doctor's return in Star Trek 3:  The Search for Spock.

1-Superman

When DC comics killed off Superman they knew from the start that it wasn't going to be one of those old-fashioned permanent deaths, because Superman's return held the potential to milk so much money out of those basement-dwelling comic book readers.  Unfortunately, many nerd-milking victims didn't realize that they were being duped until it was too late, and as a result DC's scheme proved highly lucrative.  So lucrative that even as you read this, DC is enacting plans to kill off and resurrect their entire hero catalog.  Let's hope they forget to bring Bouncing Boy back.

Want more famous fictional deaths? Check out these lists!

7 Memorable Off-Screen Deaths

8 Fictional Characters Who Died Too Early