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Compare [[Merciful Minion]].
{{examples}}▼
{{deathtrope}}
== Anime and Manga ==▼
▲{{examples}}
▲== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* At the end of ''[[Witch Hunter Robin]]'', {{spoiler|Robin and Amon}} are declared dead after an enemy base they were inside self-destructed. Doujima informs her superiors that [[No One Could Survive That]], even though both she, and the rest of the team, knows very well that the both of them almost certainly made it out unscathed. By declaring them dead, they'll be relatively safe from Solomon pursuit.
*
* Happens to {{spoiler|Kaoru}} in [[Rurouni Kenshin]] as part of Enishi's revenge. (The only reason Enishi didn't go all the way was because he was so traumatized by witnessing his sister's death that he gets physically ill at the very idea of harming a young woman.)
* In ''[[Claymore]]'', {{spoiler|After an attack on The Organization is defeated, several handlers find their [[Super Soldier|warriors]] hacking the body of the renegade named Phantom Miria into a bloody mass of meat with thier [[BFS|swords]]. Of course considering her [[Healing Factor]] this turned out to be the best way the warriors could protect the woman that had taken such pains not to do them harm from their superiors.}}
* Done by accident in ''[[Tantei Gakuen Q]]''. A businesswoman learns that the meeting she had hoped would save her company was a lost cause, so she didn't bother going on the flight to the meeting site, giving her ticket to someone on the reserve list. The plane crashed, and she the authorities assumed she died on the flight. Because her life insurance policy would yield enough to save the family business, she allowed the report of her death to stand. Unfortunately, {{spoiler|her attempt to visit her family in disguise gets her killed by her own sons, who think that she is a con artist employed by greedy relatives hoping to seize the company}}.
* In ''[[Baccano
== Comics ==▼
* A ''[[Strontium Dog]]'' story ended with Johnny discovering his target was innocent, but faced with the knowledge that if he didn't claim the bounty, someone else would. He shot the perp with a stun beam, thus recording him as dying and allowing him to live free from fear of other hunters.
* In ''[[The Mighty]]'',
== Fairy Tales ==
* Seen as early as "[[Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs (
** "[https://web.archive.org/web/20131020110357/http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/armlessmaiden/index.html The Girl with No Hands]"
** "[
** "[https://web.archive.org/web/20190504052409/http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/authors/grimms/97wateroflife.html The Water Of Life]"
== [[Film]] ==▼
▲== Film ==
* ''[[The Rock]]''
* The film ''[[Eraser]]'' has the main character go around faking deaths for witness protection.
* ''[[La Femme Nikita]]'' was an involuntary version.
* This happened in ''[[Pitch Black]]'', with Riddick asking that the others say he died on the planet/moon/hell-forsaken rock. As we see at the beginning of ''The Chronicles of Riddick'', that didn't discourage the mercenaries from hunting him down anyway. Of course, they were clued in by one of the people he rescued. In the novelization, it's made clear people were still looking for him anyway. They just couldn't find him without help.
* This happens in ''Assault on Precinct 13.'' The cop lets
* ''Extreme Prejudice'' (1987). The movie opens with the Black Ops unit assembling, stating the fact that every one is listed as having been 'killed' while on military service, in order to aid plausible
* ''[[
* This is how [[Edward Scissorhands]] got saved at the end of the movie.
* In the first ''[[Underworld (
* In ''[[Pirates of the Caribbean]] [[On Stranger Tides]]'', Blackbeard needs to get Syrena to shed a tear. After torture doesn't work, he seemingly kills Philip, the only man who's been kind to her, in front of her. It doesn't work. He orders the body disposed of. Then Philip wakes up later, goes back to rescue her - and then she sheds tears of joy, which is what Blackbeard had planned for all along.
* In ''
* In The Dark Knight Rises, Bane fakes Dr. Peval's death in a plane crash in order to retrieve him. However, its strongly implied that he intends to do worse things to him after retrieving him.
== [[Literature]] ==▼
* Narcissa Malfoy with {{spoiler|Harry}} at the end of ''[[Harry Potter and
▲== Literature ==
** Dumbledore offered to do this for Draco in ''[[Harry Potter and
▲* Narcissa Malfoy with {{spoiler|Harry}} at the end of ''[[Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows]].''
▲** Dumbledore offered to do this for Draco in ''[[Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince]],'' but didn't get the chance. [[Averted]] with {{spoiler|Dumbledore himself}}, despite what many fans (and Harry) believed.
* Dr. Yueh, for Jessica and Paul in ''[[Dune]]''.
* In ''[[X Wing Series|Isard's Revenge]]'', Rogue Squadron is ambushed by an Imperial warlord's forces; the new [[Red Shirt
* [[Con Man|Moist von Lipwig]], in the [[Discworld]] novel ''[[
* In [[Connie Wilis]]'s "Winter's Tale", "[[William Shakespeare]]" is coming home, except that Anne knows he's not her husband. She learns that her husband was lured to a tavern and murdered to pass off the body as [[
* In one of the early ''[[Sword of Truth]]'' books, Zedd fakes Kahlan's execution in a way that requires ''her'' to think she's been executed. The way the magic works, everyone involved except the caster must think the execution is genuine when the spell is cast. The result is a [[Reality Warper|reality warping]] spell that makes everyone think you're dead.
* In the fourth book of ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'', Cersei gets news that {{spoiler|Davos}} is dead. That is all we hear about it until the fifth book, when we see his side of the story. {{spoiler|Davos is locked in one of Manderly's nicer cells until he finds out that Manderly has killed someone in his place. Manderly's goal was to gain the trust of the Lannisters while simultaneously forcing Davos to secretly go fetch the Stark heir in exchange for Manderly's allegiance to Stannis.}}
* In ''[[Mrs. Pollifax, Innocent Tourist]]'', the next-to-last book in the [[Mrs. Pollifax (franchise)|''Mrs. Pollifax'' series]] of [[Spy Fiction]] novels, the Iraqi authorities who had intended to arrest author Dib Assen instead claimed they had killed him when he eluded them thanks to their own overconfidence. Because he had escaped into the desert to make his way to Syria, he wasn't able to contradict their story, and everyone believed it.
== [[Live-Action TV]] ==
▲== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* [[Nikita]] : The whole plot is based on Nikita's death being faked by division .
* At the end of ''[[Rome]]'', Titus does this with Caesar's son ({{spoiler|who was actually Titus's}}).
* This was Agent Henricksen's plan in '''Jus in Bello'', in Season 3 of ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'': to say that Sam and Dean were dead. {{spoiler|Sadly, he was killed himself before he could carry this plan out. But everyone assumed Sam and Dean had died with him.}}
* The cause of some of [[Stargate SG-1|Daniel Jackson's "deaths"]]. Just as often, it's a [[Left for Dead]] situation or [[All Just a Dream]] from the start, but there have been a few times, like the Season One episode "Fire and Water", where his death was deliberately faked by someone else because they needed a translator and couldn't wait around to ask politely.
* McCoy does this for Kirk in the ''[[Star Trek:
* John Locke tells some mobsters that his father is dead in the ''[[
* ''[[Babylon 5]]'': when Vir Cotto becomes ambassador to the Minbari, fakes the deaths of ''thousands'' of Narn refugees [[Badass Bureaucrat|in order to get them safely to other worlds]].
== [[Theatre]] ==
* ''[[Oedipus Rex]]''. It didn't end well.
* Subverted with in ''[[The Yeomen of the Guard]]'': The plot's something of a [[Gambit Pileup]], but, very briefly, Point claiming Fairfax was dead actually forced the disguised Fairfax to set up Point's [[Tear Jerker]] ending. A little less briefly *deep breath*:
** {{spoiler|The play's set in the Tudor era. Fairfax's relative wants him dead so he can inherit some entailed property, so had him condemned. Fairfax realises that under the terms of the entailment, if he marries, he can keep the relative from inheriting, so arranges with a friendly guard to marry... anyone willing. Point and Elsie work as entertainers, and have come to the Tower of London looking to get money to help Elsie's dying mother. Elsie agrees to the marriage. Then the plot to break Fairfax out of jail by some other characters happens, and Fairfax gets disguised as the son of one of the guards.}}
** {{spoiler|This is set in the Tudor era, so marriage is pretty much unbreakable, morally and legally. Point decides the only way to rescue Elsie from the criminal is to fake Fairfax's death, and sets it up with the guard who took the blame for Fairfax's escape. The shot being fired interrupts Fairfax right at the brink of telling Elsie what's going on, and he's then forced to deal with Point trying to convince his wife that he's dead, and basically trying to trick her into committing bigamy. Fairfax is morally outraged about this, but it's been a few days, and Elsie likes "Leonard", so, when Point asks Fairfax to teach him how to woo Elsie, he agrees. The demonstration is completely successful, and Elsie agrees to marry him - that him being Fairfax.}}
** {{spoiler|So, basically, Point's attempt to invoke this trope changes what would likely have been a gentle let down into a series of horrible shocks for him, and, well, after one last, desperate attempt to win Elsie back, on her wedding day to Leonard, and just after it's revealed Leonard and Fairfax are the same person - well, he basically ruins what Elsie was calling one of the happiest days of her life. His fatal, selfish flaw of making everything about him pretty much ruins any chance he had to even be friends with her, though she is still sorry for him, and, as she and Fairfax leave, he either dies or is just left a completely broken man (depending on production).}}
** And that's the ''simplified'' version. What's so great about ''Yeomen'' is it manages to have a plot that complex, but keeps it all understandable, natural, manages to invoke tragedy without having any actual villains - everyone acts out of sensible, human motivations, and noone is all that unsympathetic (even if modern productions tend to play up Fairfax's flaws a bit more, thanks to the [[Values Dissonance]] of the Tudor attitudes about marriage. Oh, and it has ''all sorts'' of [[Crowning Music of Awesome]] - it's considered by many to be Gilbert and Sullivan's best work.
* A simpler version of the tragic type: ''Rigoletto'', in which Rigoletto discovers too late that the body in the sack isn't the Duke he hired an assassin to kill to protect his daughter... but his daughter herself, having decided on the [[Heroic Sacrifice]] approach to love.
* Tragic example in [[Aida]]: When the Egyptian soldiers come looking for Aida, Nehebka sacrifices herself while the other Nubians restrain and hide Aida.
== [[Video Games]] ==
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* In ''[[Knights of the Old Republic]]'', when you are running around looking for bounties on Taris you may run into Matrix, a guy who ratted out on the interstellar crime syndicate because of a guilty conscience. There is, of course, a bounty on his head, but if you refrain from attacking him he may mention that he wouldn't be holed up hiding if he could fake his death. You can then go out and buy plot-exclusive explosives too complex for your party to use, allowing Matrix to rig his room with them. Believed dead, he disappears, and if you go to the bounty office the Hutt there tells you that his people saw you buy the explosives and next time he'd prefer you didn't do it like that. But you still get the bounty.
** Revan would have died had Bastila and the Jedi not saved him; they let the galaxy at large – including the amnesiac Revan himself – believe he did die.
* A [[Tear Jerker|heart-wrenching example]] occurs in ''[[
* In [[Mass Effect 2]], after you recruit Archangel, the 3 mercenary groups, [[Enemy Mine|who teamed up just to kill him]], all decide to spread the rumor that he's dead. The fact that the mercs managed to hit Archangel the face with a gunship rocket lends credibility to the story, and as nobody knows Archangel's real identity, no one questions it when they see him in your party.
* In ''[[Back to The Future]]: The Game'', Marty needs to convince Trixie that Arthur has been killed by Kid Tannen... but, for fear of the [[Grandfather Paradox]], can't actually let Arthur get killed. How convenient that {{spoiler|Kid Tannen keeps caricatures of all the people he's killed on his wall.}}
▲== [[Web Comics]] ==
* ''[[Girl Genius]]'' has [http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20160427 Doctor Zardeliv], whom everyone wanted to either recruit or assassinate. But the corpse was found a little too soon, and by another [[McNinja|Smoke Knight]] who knew him personally at that, so this didn't quite work.
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* Iroh of ''[[
* In the premiere episodes of ''Justice League'', {{spoiler|J'onn J'onnz masks Batman's thoughts and claims him to have been shot dead in the line of duty. This allows Batman the time needed to prepare a device to "[[Reverse the Polarity|reverse the ion charge]]" of the [[Big Bad]]'s evil cloud-making machine.}}
* In [[Family Guy]], Quagmire fakes his death to get out of a marriage. Joe covers for him.
{{quote|
* According to the ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'' TV Funhouse short [https://web.archive.org/web/20111201001044/http://www.hulu.com/watch/1521/saturday-night-live-disney-vault-vt "Journey To The Disney Vault"], this was apparently what Disney did to [[Jim Henson]] after he refused to sell them his company in 1990.
== [[Real Life]] ==
* In [[Real Life]] poet and writer Fernando Pessoa assisted famous [[Aleister Crowely]] in faking his own suicide.
* Emperor Nero's mother was going to be killed, but a friend of hers pretended to be her. Since it was nighttime, it worked. Some versions state that she told said friend to pretend to be her in order to make sure she'd be rescued however.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Death Tropes]]
[[Category:Older Than Radio]]
▲[[Category:Death Faked For You]]
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