A more unpredictable form of being brought Back from the Dead, where a deceased character is revived by something or someone else without having been intended to.
Some causes include:
- A World-Healing Wave has the side effect of reanimating living things.
- A wish granted by a Literal Genie, depending on what is asked of the wisher.
- A reanimation process where another person is revived instead of the intended target.
In some instances, because the character in question was not meant to be brought back, there there may be complications with their newly revived body, such as missing certain parts or even becoming a member of The Undead. Other situations may involve a character being intentionally revived, but not being expected to stay alive.
May overlap with Unwitting Instigator of Doom if the character in question is a villain or Asshole Victim that would’ve been better off remaining dead, or Unwanted Revival if they wanted to stay dead. High likelihood of Came Back Wrong due to the resurrection being botched. May often be either Sealed Good in a Can, Sealed Evil in a Can, or even Sealed Badass in a Can. Compare Creating Life Is Unforeseen, i.e. accidentally Creating Life. See also Accidental Murder.
Since this is a Death Trope, all spoilers will be unmarked.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- Dragon Ball Z: Discussed in the Buu saga when the protagonists decide to use the Namekian Dragon Balls to revive everyone who was killed during Buu's rampage. Vegeta however points out that doing so would unwittingly cause Babidi and every other deceased evil being who was involved in the conflict by extension to be revived too, and so they need to word the wish in a way that excludes the latter group lest they be allowed to wreak havoc again.
- Jojos Bizarre Adventure Golden Wind: While aboard the train, Bucciarati is trying not to be detected by Pesci's Beach Boy and zips himself apart into dozens of pieces. To keep the sound of his beating heart from giving himself away, he zips it into two halves. He almost dies, but Pesci is so upset over Prosciutto's death, he forces the train to stop. The movement jolts Bucciarati's pieces closer together, letting him put himself back together again.
- My Hero Academia: At the start of the Paranormal Liberation War arc, the heroes raid the hospital where Shigaraki is being experimented on to amplify his powers, and successfully smash his stasis tube before Doctor Garaki can revive him. During the ensuing cleanup operation, however, one of the heroes accidentally causes a spark that ripples through the tube's spilled liquid and provides enough of a jolt to revive Shigaraki. Shit hits the fan very quickly.
- Sankarea: After helping a boy with an experiment intended to resurrect his dead cat, Rea steals a sample of the apparently failed serum with the intention of killing herself with it. Not only does the serum fail to kill her, but when she falls off a cliff trying to save the boy from her abusive father the following day, she comes back to life as a zombie because of the serum.
Comic Books
- Avengers Disassembled: Hawkeye sacrifices his life to stop a Kree invasion. The Kree invasion was part of a massive illusion created by Scarlet Witch. Hawkeye was a real victim. The next year, during House of M, Scarlet Witch remakes reality to create a new world where mutants are on top, and at the end of the crossover, Wanda restores the world back to normal. One of the consequences is that Hawkeye is brought back to life.
- Runaways: Runaways (Rainbow Rowell) features a variation; when Chase Stein intentionally resurrected Gert Yorkes, after previous circumstances had restored the long-dead Alex Wilder to life, he unwittingly restored the Pride, meaning that the deal that the old Pride made (in which six families, including the Wilders, Steins, and Yorkeses provided souls to the Gibborim in order to bring about the end of the world) was back on, and thus the surviving Gibborim arrived to collect on the deal, giving the Runaways one week to find a soul and end the world or else they would be killed.
- Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics): One story has Dr. Eggman attempting to use leftover energies from a period when Knuckles attempted to alter reality, unwittingly resurrecting the original Robotnik. Thankfully, the Freedom Fighters take advantage of their egos and destroy the machine that brought back Robotnik, killing him once more.
- Wolverine: This is how the titular event of Return of Wolverine happened: Persephone, the Big Bad of that and the preceding Hunt for Wolverine has the power to animate dead bodies, which she uses to do her dirty work — only, when she used it on Wolverine, who'd lost his Healing Factor in the lead-up to Death of Wolverine, it ended up actually restoring it, which in turn caused Wolverine to actually be resurrected.
Films — Live-Action
- At the beginning of Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, Tommy Jarvis travels to the cemetery where Jason Voorhees is buried to dig up his grave and cremate his body. But when Tommy stabs Jason in the chest with a metal rod, a bolt of lightning strikes the body, and as a result, Tommy inadvertently brings Jason Voorhees back to life.
- Ghost from the Machine: The titular Machine was intended to deliberately induce a haunting, by acting on the corelation between ghost phenomena and strong electro-magnetic fields. However, instead of bringing back the inventor's mother and father, it brings back his next-door neighbor's dead wife and the insane couple who used to live in his house until the murder/suicide.
- Ghost in the Machine: The "Ghost" was a dying Serial Killer whose mind was accidentally infused into the internet by an accident involving a power surge and a CAT scan machine. This allows him to manipulate any device connected to the internet; ie, all of them. For example, a microwave, which he ramps up to the point it becomes a flesh-melting Death Ray.
- Hocus Pocus: Max performs Unexpectedly Real Magic in lighting the Black Flame Candle during a full moon on All Hallow's Eve, which triggers the Wicked Witch Winifred Sanderson's 300-year-old Dying Curse on the town, calling her and her sisters back from the dead.
- At the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Spock dies saving the Enterprise and his body is left on the newly-created Genesis Planet. In the follow-up Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, the Genesis Effect regenerates Spock as a child and makes him age rapidly with the unstable planet.
Literature
- American Gods: Shadow accidentally brings his wife Laura back from the dead when he places the gold coin that Mad Sweeny gave him on her corpse during the funeral. However, she Came Back Wrong, aware but in a state of steady decay.
- Lazy Dungeon Master: As a result of Rokuko's absurd luck with the Dungeon Gacha, she accidentally pulls Elulu, an elf-friend of Ichika's who was murdered over a year prior by Suzuki, as a ghost. Though surprised at first, she is quick to adapt to her circumstances.
- A Song of Ice and Fire: The Red Priest Thoros discovers that magic is returning to the world when he performs a funeral blessing for Beric Dondarrion, only for the rite to breathe The Flame of Life back into his body instead.
Thoros: The last kiss it is called... I had given it a time or two myself, as all priests must. But never before had I felt a dead man shudder as the fire filled him, nor seen his eyes come open.
- Torchwood (BBC Books): In "Long Time Dead", Suzie gets a doctor to sew a mysterious alien device into her stomach, thinking that it would help boost her efforts to use the Resurrection Gauntlet on other people. It — and her efforts to take control over death in general — fails, but in reality, it did have the ability to bring back people that it's sewn into, which Suzie is surprised to find out when she resurrects in the aftermath of the Hub blowing up.
- The Wheel of Time: At the climax of The Fires of Heaven, Rand kills Rahvin with balefire, a spell that even burns the victim out of the recent past. This normally only affects a few seconds, but Rand overcharges it so much that it undoes all Rahvin's actions in their battle, unexpectedly reversing the deaths of several of Rand's friends. It's doubly impressive as the only known case of a mortal bringing someone Back from the Dead.
Live-Action TV
- Doctor Who: Exploited in "The Witch's Familiar". Davros' plan is to convince the Doctor to give him some of his regeneration energy, then siphon it off and use it to rejuvenate the Daleks of Skaro. The Doctor realises what he's up to, but goes along with it because he's realised what Davros hasn't: the regeneration energy will also revive the decaying Daleks in Skaro's sewers (which are still technically alive but rotted to the point they may as well not be). Said Daleks are not best pleased at having been left to rot and proceed to tear Skaro apart.
- Power Rangers: This has happened a couple times.
- Power Rangers Ninja Storm: This is how Shimazu is brought into the show. Shimazu was an evil human warlord with magical powers who lived 2,000 years ago, but his spirit was sealed inside a mask carved in his likeness, and the mask and his outfit ended up on a mannequin in a museum in modern times. While visiting the museum, the evil robot, Motodrone, fired an energy beam at Marah and Kapri, which missed them and hit the mannequin instead, energizing it and allowing Shimazu to move again.
- Power Rangers Beast Morphers: This is the origin story for Evox. A young Nate Silva, messing around with various morphers, Morph-X, and snake DNA, got to Scott Truman's Cell Shift Morpher. Not knowing what the Morpher was, he infected it with the Venjix Virus, the Morph-X, and DNA, which revived and altered Venjix, turning him into Evox.
- Pushing Daisies: Ned had to learn the hard way about his power to raise the dead, starting in childhood when his dog was hit by a car and was unexpectedly brought back by his touch.
Tabletop Games
- Promethean: The Created: Besides the Lineages for Player Characters that exist outside the sourcebook, supplemental materials also describe the extremely rare "Extempore", Prometheans that are not created by a demiurge or another Promethean, but simply come into existence. One of them is "Bin Gereh" who awoke immediately following the deadly Aleppo earthquake of 1138.
All that geologic energy and life/death force sloshing around lit the Azoth inside him.
Video Games
- Arcane Adventures: Acheron is a user of Dead Revival Magic, which allows him to raise the dead. He does so to raise an army, but in doing so, accidentally resurrects a peasant he killed centuries ago. This peasant would go on to defeat him and be known as the Peacekeeper.
- Diablo III: The end of Act I reveals that Tyrael, the Archangel of Justice, has renounced his position in Heaven so that he can help the humans against the Great Evils of Hell more directly, without being bound by angelic law's non-interference clause. Unfortunately, without an Archangel to regulate it, the concept of Justice resurrected all the people who had been unjustly killed in the wars between Heaven, Hell, and humanity... causing the Zombie Apocalypse that almost detroyed New Tristram and which the Player Character spent a good portion of the act fighting against.
- The Elder Scrolls series has an in-universe short story, "Palla", about a wizard who falls in love with a statue of a beautiful woman heroically fighting a hideous monster. He develops an unhealthy obsession with becoming a Necromancer and bringing the heroine back from the dead to be his lover... but the only thing he knows about the statue is the name "Palla", and as he learns to his horror in the Twist Ending, the heroine's name was actually Xarlys, and by calling "Palla" back from the dead with his rituals, he's resurrected the monster instead.
- EverQuest II: Anashti Sul used to be the Goddess of Health until she introduced her "cure" for death to Norrath — the creation of The Undead. She was banished by other Gods to the Void, where she was trapped for countless millennia. She plotted a way to get back to Norrath by having her loyal Shadowmen armies invade Norrath to secure an anchor for her to return, but she never factored one possibility. When adventurers came to the Void to fight back the Shadowmen invasion, they fought and killed her. She was surprised to learn her death was the catalyst needed for her to physically resurrect back on Norrath, where she could now take her place as the Goddess of Undeath in Norrath's pantheon.
- Kid Icarus: Uprising: The end of Chapter 5 has Dark Pit taking Pandora's lingering essence after her death and applying it to himself so he can fly indefinitely unlike the original. In Chapter 22 however, he accidentally allows Pandora to revive by standing too close to the Rewind Spring trying to submerge Pit to save him from dying, forcing Dark Pit to defeat her again.
Viridi: He basically had her remains living in his wings. Gross.
- MediEvil: Sir Daniel Fortesque was killed by an arrow to the face while leading the king's army in a charge against the traitorous court wizard Zarok. 100 years later, Zarok returns and casts a necromancy spell that raises an army of zombies to serve him — which also brings Sir Dan back as a free-willed undead.
- Arguably more of an accidental rebooting than an accidental resurrection, except GlaDOS does repeatedly say you "killed" her after Wheatley inadvertently brings her back to life in Portal 2.
Webcomics
- MS Paint Masterpieces: In #989: Aeropolis Noom, Dr. Light accidentally revives Enker while using Daidigger D's time-rewinding abilities to undo the death and destruction caused by Dr. Wily's forces.
Dr. Light: ...ah, wait, that wasn't one of mine. Whoops!
- The Order of the Stick: In the prequel book "Start of Darkness", Big Bad Xykon has a Traumatic Superpower Awakening as a sorcerer when, as a child, he finds the corpse of his dog Barky... and his grief causes him to unintentionally cast a necromancy spell that turns Barky into a zombie-dog.
- Sluggy Freelance: The Vorpyr Sylvia, one of the few surviving members of the Lysinda Circle, finds what she believes to be the remains of Queen Lysinda, and goes to a great deal of effort to find a sample of Lysinda's blood so she can revive her — only to find that she's actually brought back idiotic Casanova Wannabe vampire Sam Sein, who had previously been Eaten Alive by the demon N'aaaw.
Web Originals
- Battle for Dream Island Again: It's well-established in this season that Bubble can be resurrected by simply blowing a bubble while she's dead. In "Catch These Hands", Pencil tries to pantomime blowing out a candle while inside a trash compactor, but her teammates just don't understand, so she decides to crank up her candle-blowing technique to the max and ends up unintentionally blowing a saliva bubble, bringing Bubble back to life inside the trash compactor with her. However, this is short-lived as the compactor crushes both of them just seconds later.
- Critical Role: Played With. Several years ago, Vess decided to steal the role of Nonagon from Lucien by shattering his soul during a ritual to murder him. However, in the process, she unknowingly left behind a sliver of his soul, which was apparently enough to raise the body from the dead even after being buried, returning as a new entity called Mollymauk who lacks Lucien's memories and refuses to seek them out. After Lucien is properly resurrected sometime later, he chooses to murder Vess at the first opportunity.
- Dragonball Z Abridged: During the Namek saga of Season 2, the heroes make the wish to revive everyone killed by Frieza and his men, mostly with the Namekians and some of the Z warriors in mind. The final moments of the season reveal that this wish also revived Nappa, as he had technically been killed by one of Frieza's men (Vegeta, before he went renegade).
- Friendship is Witchcraft: In "Neigh, Soul Sister," Rarity is decorating an outfit with dragon scales. She doesn't have enough and mutters, "If only we could kill Fluttershy's father again and get more." Pinkie's portal triggers upon hearing those words and brings Dragonshy back to life. Later, when Applejack comments that the Sentience Social is happening on the anniversary of Granny Smith's death, she comes back to life via the portal as well.
Western Animation
- Adventure Time: The Stakes miniseries reveals Marceline to have received most of her powers from killing powerful vampires that terrorized Ooo long ago and absorbing their essences via her soul-sucking ability. When she finally decides to undergo Princess Bubblegum's offered treatment to have her vampirism removed, it has the unintended side-effect of resurrecting the aforementioned vampires via the extracted gunk that manages to escape into the wilderness. Realizing the danger they still possess to the world, Marceline sets out to kill them again before they can regain their full strength.
- Catscratch: The episode "Zombie Party a Go-Go!" Has Waffle mistaking a Scottish Black Magic spellbook for a cookbook due to him not listening to Gordon's instructions for where to find the latter ("blue cookbook, green room"; Waffle instead searched for "green cookbook, blue room"), and ends up raising a horde of zombies from the nearby graveyard.
- Fairly OddParents!: In "That's Life!", Timmy tries to compensate for his mother's terrible gardening skills by wishing that everything in her garden was "full of life". Unbeknownst to Timmy or his fairies, Timmy's pet gerbil Eddie (who he was told ran away) is also buried in the garden, and the spell resurrects him. It's later revealed that all of Timmy's other previously-owned pets (who were also said to have run away) were resurrected as well.
- Family Guy: The episode "It Takes a Village Idiot, and I Married One" has Peter rerouting Quahog's power grid to reanimate deceased actor Jim Varney. But then Peter realizes this to have been a mistake and that he actually intended to reanimate John Belushi, so he takes Jim out into the backyard with a shotgun to kill him again. Except…
[After a shotgun blast is heard offscreen, Peter hurriedly returns to the kitchen empty-handed]
Peter: He got the shotgun, Brian! Don't ask me how he did it, but Jim Varney got the shotgun! [as he runs away] Run for your life!
Brian: What?
Peter: RUN! - Justice League Unlimited: Throughout the final season, Lex Luthor has been seeking to restore Brainiac and regain his godlike power. Retrieving enough of Brainiac's remains, Luthor uses Tala to finally act. However, since doing this meant betraying her, Tala ends up using her last bit of life to spite Luthor and resurrects Darkseid instead.
- Miraculous Ladybug: After they defeat the Monster of the Week, Ladybug will release her magic ladybugs to fix all the damage they caused. Feast is much older than the typical villains they face and she inadvertently restores the guardian temple it destroyed over 170 years ago along with all the monks that were inside. One of them tracks her down the following season after she becomes a guardian without the bulk of the training and attempts to confiscate the miraculous.
- Ninjago:
- The end of Season 2 sees the Overlord's destruction at Lloyd's hands, with Borg Industries being built over the battle site to symbolize how Ninjago will never submit to any evil that tries to invade it. However, doing this accidentally allows the Overlord to resurrect inside Cyrus Borg's computer systems as a sentient virus, kicking off the events of Season 3.
- The Season 11 episode "The Kaiju Protocol" has Wu and P.I.X.A.L. accidentally bringing back the Preeminent, who was killed by Nya in Season 5, from the Departed Realm during their search for the Never-Realm. Fortunately, they manage to defend Ninjago City from her rampage and send her back.
- The Simpsons: In the Treehouse of Horror short "Dial "Z" for Zombies", Bart finds a spellbook of Black Magic in Springfield Library and tries to resurrect Lisa's deceased cat Snowball I, but accidentally reanimates some zombies from the nearby human cemetery instead.
- At the end of the Backyard subplot in Solar Opposites, Terry uses the make-everything-alive ray to restore the backyard after its shrunken populace burns it. While Terry only wants to restore the backyard to show Korvo he did all the chores to prevent being excluded from family outings, he also resurrects the Duke, who died in the second season in a Heroic Sacrifice, and possibly other inhabitants of the Backyard.
